Keep Your Card in This Pocket
Books will be issued only on presentation of proper
library cards.
Unless labeled otherwise, books may be retained
for two weeks. Borrowers finding books marked, de-
faced or mutilated are expected to report same af
library desk; otherwise the last borrower will be held
responsible for all imperfections discovered.
The card holder is responsible for all books drawn
on this card.
Penalty for over-due books 2c a day plus cost of
notices.
Lost cards and change of residence must be re-
ported promptly,
Public Library
Kansas City, Mo.
TtNSlON UNVt.L.OPL CORP,
D 0001 035337^1 D
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE
Gambetta proclaiming the Republic of France.
From the painting by Howard Pyle.
A SHORT HISTORY OF
FRANCE
BY
MARY PLATT PARMELE
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY
WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARISON
COPYRIGHT, 1898, 1905, 1906, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Early Conditions in Gaul, ...... i
CHAPTER II.
Julius Cesar's Conquest of Gaul Lutetia, . .10
CHAPTER III.
Birth of Christianity Its Dissemination Its Es-
pousal by the Roman Empire Hunnish In-
vasion, 15
CHAPTER IV.
The Frank in Gatil Clovis Rois-Paineants
Charles Martel Mahomet an ism Pepiii Seizes
the Crown, ........ 24
v
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
PAGE
Charlemagne Holy Roman Empire Treaty of
Verdun, .... ... 36
CHAPTER VI.
Invasions by Northmen Normandy Given to In-
vaders Feudalism Decline of Kingship
Ascendancy of the Church Hugh Capet
"Truce of God" William the Conqueror, , 44
CHAPTER VII.
Social Structure of France Free Cities Their
Creation and Enfranchisement The Crusades
Philip Augustus War with King John of
England Toulouse and the Albigensian War, 56
CHAPTER VIII.
Abelard Louis IX. End of Crusades Philip III.
Philip IV. and Papacy Creation of States-
General Popes at Avignon Knights Tem-
plar Exterminated Change in Succession, . 68
CHAPTER IX.
Edward III. Claims French Throne Crecy Poi-
tiers Treaty of Bretigny Charles V. and
Bertrand du Guesclin Death of Black Prince
Charles VI. A Mad King Feud Between
Houses of Orleans and Burgundy Siege of
Orleans Joan of Arc Charles VII. , . .79
CONTENTS. Vii
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
Standing Army Created Louis XI. The Passing
of Medievalism Charles VIII. Invasion of
Italy Louis XII. Francis I. Struggle for
Throne of the German Empire The Reforma-
tion, . . .96
CHAPTER XI.
The House of Guise Marie Stiiart Francis II.
His Death Regency of Catharine de' Medici
Her Designs Coligny Henry of Navarre
His Marriage Charles IX. St. Bartholo-
mew's Eve Henry III. His Death Henry
of Navarre King, . . . . . .113
CHAPTER XII.
Edict of Nantes Ravaillac Louis XIII. Re-
gency of Maria de' Medici Richelieu The
Fronde, ........ 130
CHAPTER XIII.
Louis XIV. Four Great Wars Revocation of
Edict of Nantes A Victorious Coalition
Death of Louis XIV. Louis XV., . . . 145
CHAPTER XIV.
John Law Life at Versailles Marriage of Dau-
phin Unseen Currents Approaching Crisis
Death of Louis XV., ,. 161
vui CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XV.
PAGE
Louis XVI. American Revolution Turgot
Necker States-General Summoned National
Assembly Destruction of Bastille Revo-
lution Lafayette Varennes The Temple
Triumphant Jacobins Execution of the King
Charlotte Corday Execution of Queen
Fate of the Dauphin Girondists Philippe
Egalite Revolution Ended, . . . .174
CHAPTER XVI.
France a Republic Napoleon Bonaparte Break-
ing Chains in Italy Carnpo Formio Campaign
in Egypt An Empire Rapid Steps from Tou-
lon to Versailles A New Map of Europe Maria
Louisa Moscow Leipsic Elba, . . .
CHAPTER XVII.
Louis XVIII. Return of Napoleon Waterloo
St. Helena Bourbon Restoration Charles X.
Louis Philippe Revolution Second Re-
public Louis Napoleon, ..... 216
CHAPTER XVIII.
Second French Republic The Coup d'Etat Na-
poleon III. A " Liberator " in Italy Peace of
Villafranca Suez Canal An Empire in Mex-
ico Franco-Prussian War Sedan, . . .228
CONTENTS. ix
CHAPTER XIX.
PAGE
Third French Republic The CommuneThe Ger-
mans in Paris Reconstruction from Thiers to
Loubet Affaire Dreyfus Law of Associations
Separation of Church and State Conference
at Algeciras Election of M. Fallieres Con-
clusion, ........ 242
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Gambetta proclaiming- the Republic of France
Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
Coronation of Charlemagne 38
Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May 30, 1431 92
Napoleon at the Battle of Rivoli, January 14,
1797 204
Josephine crowned Empress, December 2, 1804,
in Notre Dame Cathedral 214
The Revolution of July 28, 1830 .... 222
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
CHAPTER I.
ONE of the greatest achievements of modern
research is the discovery of a key by which we
may determine the kinship of nations. What
we used to conjecture, we now know. An
identity in the structural form of language es-
tablishes with scientific certitude that however
diverse their character and civilizations, Rus-
sian, German, Englishman, Frenchman, Span-
iard, are all but branches from the same parent
stem, are all alike children of the Asiatic
Aryan.
So skilful are modern methods of question-
ing the past, and so determined the effort to
find out its secrets, we may yet know the origin
and history of this wonderful Asiatic people,
and when and why they left their native con-
tinent and colonized upon the northern shores
2 A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE.
of the Mediterranean. Certain it is, however,
that, more centuries before the Christian era
than there have been since, they had peopled
Western Europe.
This branch of the Aryan family is known as
the Keltic, and was older brother to the Teuton
and Slav, which at a much later period followed
them from the ancestral home, and appropri-
ated the middle and eastern portions of the
European Continent.
The name of Gaul was given to the territory
lying between the Ocean and the Mediter-
ranean, and the Pyrenees and the Alps. And
at a later period a portion of Northern Gaul,
and the islands lying north of it, received from
an invading chieftain and his tribe the name
Brit or Britain (or Pryd or Prydain).
If the mind could be carried back on the
track of time, and we could see what we now
call France as it existed twenty centuries before
the Christian era, we should behold the same
natural features: the same mountains rearing
their heads; the same rivers 'flowing to the sea;
the same plains stretching out in the sunlight
But instead of vines and flowers and cultivated
fields we should behold great herds of wild ox
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 3
and elk, and of swine as fierce as wolves, rang-
ing in a climate as cold as Norway; and vast,
inaccessible forests, the home of beasts of prey,
which contended with man for food and shelter.
Let us read Guizofs description of life in
Gaul five centuries before Christ :
" Here lived six or seven millions of men a
bestial life, in dwellings dark and low, built of
wood and clay and covered with branches or
straw, open to daylight by the door alone and
confusedly heaped together behind a rampart
of timber, earth, and stone, which enclosed and
protected what they were pleased to call a
town! 3
Such was the Paris and such the Frenchmen
of the age of Pericles! And the same tides
that washed the sands of Southern Gaul, a few
hours later ebbed and flowed upon the shores
of Greece rich in culture, with refinements
and subtleties in art which are the despair of
the world to-day with an intellectual endow-
ment never since attained by any people.
The same sun which rose upon temples and
palaces and life serene and beautiful in Greece,
an hour later lighted sacrificial altars and hid-
eous orgies in the forests of Gaul. While the
4 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. ,
Gaul was nailing the heads of human victims
to his door, or hanging them from the bridle
of his horse, or burning or flogging his pris-
oners to death, the Greek, with a literature, an
art, and a civilization in ripest perfection, dis-
cussed with his friends the deepest problems
of life and destiny, which were then baffling
human intelligence, even as they are with us to-
day. Truly we of Keltic and Teuton descent
are late-comers upon the stage of national
life.
There was no promise of greatness in an-
cient Gaul. It was a great, unregulated force,
rushing hither and thither. Impelled by in-
satiate greed for the possessions of their neigh-
bors, there was no permanence in their loves
or their hatreds. The enemies of to-day were
the allies of to-morrow. Guided entirely by
the fleeting desires and passions of the moment,
with no far-reaching plans to restrain, the sixty
or more tribes composing the Gallic people
were in perpetual state of feud and anarchy,
apparently insensible to the ties of brotherhood,
which give concert of action, and stability in
form of national life. If they overran a neigh-
boring country, it seemed not so much for per-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. $
manent acquisition, as to make it a camping-
ground until its resources were exhausted.
We read of one Massillia who came with a
colony of Greeks long ages ago, and after
founding the city of Marseilles, created a nar-
row, bright border of Greek civilization along
the southern edge of the benighted land. It
was a brief illumination, lasting only a century
or more, and leaving few traces; but it may
account for the superior intellectual quality
w T hich later distinguished Provence, the home
of minstrelsy.
It requires a vast extent of territory to sus-
tain a people living by the chase, and upon
herds and flocks; hence the area which now
amply maintains forty millions of Frenchmen
was all too small for six or seven million Gauls ;
and they were in perpetual struggle with their
neighbors for land more land.
" Give us land/ 7 they said to the Romans,
and when land was denied them and the gates
of cities disdainfully closed upon their mes-
sengers, not land, but vengeance, was their cry ;
and hordes of half-naked barbarians trampled
down the vineyards, and rushed, a tumultuous
torrent, upon Rome.
6 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
The Romans could not stand before this new
and strange kind of warfare. The Gauls
streamed over the vanquished legions into the
Eternal City, silent and deserted save only by
the Senate and a few who remained intrenched
in the Citadel; and there the barbarians kept
them besieged for seven months, while they
made themselves at home amid uncompre-
hended luxuries.
Of course Roman skill and courage at last
dislodged and drove them back. But the fact
remained that the Gaul had been there mas-
ter of Rome ; that the iron-clad legions had been
no match for his naked force, and a new sen-
sation thrilled through the length and breadth
of Gaul. It was the first throb of national life.
The sixty or more fragments drew closer to-
gether into something like Gallic unity with
a common danger to meet, a common foe to
drive back.
Hereafter there was another hunger to be
appeased besides that for food and land; a
hunger for conquest, for vengeance, and for
glory for the Gallic name. National pride was
born.
For years they hovered like wolves about
A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE. 7
Rome. But skill and superior intelligence tell
in the centuries. It took long and cost no
end of blood and treasure; but two hundred
years from the capture of Rome, the Gauls
were driven out of Italy, and the Alps pro-
nounced a barrier set by nature herself against
barbarian encroachments.
Italy was not the only country suffering
from the destroying footsteps of the Western
Kelts. There had been long before an overflow
of a tribe in Northern Gaul (the Kymrians),
which had hewed and plundered its way south
and eastward; until at the time of Alexander
(B.C. 340) it was knocking at the gates of
Macedonia.
Stimulated by the success at Rome fifty years
earlier, they were, with fresh insolence, de-
manding " land," and during the centuries
which followed, the Gallic name acquired no
fresh lustre in Greece. Half-naked, gross,
ferocious, and ignorant, sometimes allies, but
always a scourge, they finally crossed the
Hellespont (B.C. 278), and turned their atten-
tion to Asia Minor. And there, at last, we
find them settled in a province called Gallicia,
where they lived without amalgamating with
8 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
the people about them, and four hundred years
after Christ were speaking the language of
their tribal home in what is now Belgium.
And these were the Galatians the " foolish
Galatians," to whom Paul addressed his epistle;
and we have followed up this Gallic thread
simply because it mingles with the larger strand
of ancient and sacred history with which we
are all so familiar.
It is not strange that Roman courage became
a byword. The fibre of Rome was toughened
by perpetual strain of conflict. Even while
she was struggling with Gaul and with the
memories of the Carthaginian wars still fresh
at Rome, the Goths were at her gates their
blows directed with a solidity superior to that
of the barbarians who had preceded them.
Where the Gauls had knocked, the Goths thun-
dered.
Again the city was invaded by barbarian
feet, and again did superior training and in-
telligence drive back the invading torrent and
triumph over native brute force.
Such, in brief outline, was the condition of"
the centuries just before the Christian era.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE, g
It is easy now to read the meaning of these
agitated centuries, and to recognize the prepa-
ration for the passing of the old and the com-
ing of the new.
CHAPTER II.
THE making of a nation is not unlike bread
or cake making. One element is used as the
basis, to which are added other component
parts, of varying qualities, and the result we
call England, or Germany, or France. The
steps by which it is accomplished, the blending
and fusing of the elements, require centuries,
and the process makes what we call history.
It was written in the book of fate that Gaul
should become a great nation; but not until
fused and interpenetrated with two other na-
tionalities. She must first be humanized and
civilized by the Roman, and then energized and
made free from the Roman by the Teuton.
The instrument chosen for the former was
Julius Ccesar, and for the latter five centuries
later Clovis, the Prankish leader.
It is safe to affirm that no man has ever so
changed the course of human events as did
Julius Cassar. Napoleon, who strove to imi-
tate him 1800 years later, was a charlatan in
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. II
comparison; a mere scene-shifter on a great
theatrical stage. Few traces of his work re-
main upon humanity to-day.
Caesar opened up a pathway for the old civili-
zations of the world to flow into Western
Europe, and the sodden mass of barbarism was
infused with a life-compelling current. This
was not accomplished by placing before the in-
ferior race a higher ideal of life for imitation,
but by a mingling of the blood of the nations
a transfusion into Gallic veins of the germs
of a higher living and thinking thus making
them heirs to the great civilizations of antiquity.
Was any human event ever fraught with
such consequences to the human race as the con-
quest of Gaul by Julius Caesar ?
The Gallic wars had for centuries drained
the treasure and taxed the resources of Rome.
Caesar conceived the audacious Idea of stopping
them at their source in fact, of making Gaul
a Roman province.
It was a marvellous exhibition, not simply
of force, but of force wielded by supreme in-
telligence and craft. He had lived many years
among this people and knew their sources of
weakness, their internal jealousies and rivalries.
12 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
their incohesiveness. When they hurled them-
selves against Rome, it was as a mass of sharp
fragments. When the Goths did the same, it
was as one solid, indivisible body. Caesar saw
that by adroit management he could disinte-
grate this people while conquering them.
By forcibly maintaining in power those who
submitted to him, being by turns gentle and
severe, ingratiating here, terrifying there, he
established a tremendous personal force; and
during nine years carried on eight campaigns,
marvels in the art of war, as well as in the
subtler methods of negotiation and intrigue.
He had successively dealt with all the Keltic
tribes, even including Great Britain, subjugat-
ing either through their own rivalries, or by
his invincible arm.
Equally able to charm and to terrify, he had
all the gifts, all the means to success and em-
pire, that can be possessed by man. Great in
politics as in war, as full of resource in the
forum as on the battle-field, he was by nature
called to dominion.
It was not as a patriot, simply intent upon
freeing Rome of an harassing enemy, that he
endured those nine years In Gaul; not as a
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 13
great leader burning with military ardor that
he conducted those eight campaigns. The con-
quest of Gaul meant the greater conquest of
Rome. The one was accomplished; he now
turned his back upon the devastated country,
and prepared to complete his great project of
human ascendency.
Rome was mistress of the world ; he would
be master of Rome.
In the early days of the conquest of Gaul a
small island lying in the river Seine was chosen
for the residence of the Roman Governors, and
called Lutetia. The residence soon grew into
the Palace of the Caesars; and then bridges
spanned the river, and roads and aqueducts
and faubourgs sprang into existence across the
Seine, and Lutetia was swallowed up in Paris
so named for a Gallic tribe, the Parisii, which
had once encamped there. Standing within
the Palais de Justice on this island to-day, one
is in direct touch with Rome when she was mis-
tress of the world. The feet of the Csesars
have pressed those stones. Those vaulted ceil-
ings have looked down upon Julian the Apos-
tate; he who upon his throne in the far East
sighed for " Lutetia " his " dear Lutetia."
14 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
At Passy and Montmartre, and where stands
the Palais Royal, rich Romans had their subur-
ban homes, and Roman legions were encamped
where are now the Palais de Luxembourg and
the Sorbonne. And with a mingling of Keltic
and Latin, there had commenced a new form
of human speech.
Not Paris alone, but all of Gaul felt the awak-
ening touch of a great civilization, and with
improved ideals in living there .came another
great advance. The human sacrifices and ab-
horrent practices of the Druidical faith were
abandoned, and Jupiter and Minerva and the
gods of Parnassus supplanted the grim deities
of a more ancient mythology. But while Rome
was a powerful teacher, she was a cruel mis-
tress and shackles were galling to these free
barbarians. In the midst of universal misery
there came tidings of something better than the
gods of Parnassus, when in A.D. 160 Irenaeus
came to Lyons and there established the first
Church of Christ ; and here it was that Marcus
Aurelius ordered the persecution which was
intended to stamp out the new and fanatical
heresy.
CHAPTER III.
WHILE the Star of Empire was thus moving
toward the West, another and brighter star had
arisen in the East. So accustomed are we to
the story, that we lose all sense of wonder at
its recital.
Julius Caesar's brief triumph was over.
Marc Antony had recited his virtues over his
bier, Rome had wept, and then forgotten him
in the absorbing splendors of his nephew Au-
gustus. In an obscure village of an obscure
country in Asia Minor the young wife of a
peasant finds shelter in a stable, and gives birth
to a son, who is cradled in the straw of a
manger from which the cattle are feeding.
Can the mind conceive of human circum-
stances more lowly? The child grew to man-
hood, and in his thirty-three years of life was
never lifted above the obscure sphere into which
he was born; never spoke from the vantage-
ground of worldly elevation; simply moving
15
1 6 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
among people of his own station in life, me-
chanics, fishermen, and peasants, he told of a
religion of love, a gospel of peace, for which
he was willing to die.
Who would have dreamed that this was the
germ of the most potent, the most regener-
ative force the world had ever known ? That
thrones, empires, principalities, and powers
would melt and crumble before His name?
Of all miracles, is not this the greatest?
The passionate ardor with which this re-
ligion was propagated in the first two centuries
had no motive but the yearning to make others
share in its benefits and hopes ; and to this end
to accept the belief that Jesus Christ had come
in fulfilment of the promise of a Saviour who
should be sent to this world clothed with
divine authority to establish a spiritual king-
dom, in which he was King of kings, Lord of
lords, Meditator between us and the Father,
of whom he was the " only begotten Son."
The religion in its essence was absolutely
simple. Its founder summed it up in two sen-
tences: expressing the duty of man to man,
and of man to God. That was all the theol-
ogy he formulated.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 17
For two centuries the religion of Christ was
an elemental spiritual force. It appealed only
to the highest attributes and longings of the
human soul, and under its sustaining influence
frail women, men, and even children were able
to endure tortures, of which we cannot read
even now without shuddering horror.
Nature's method of gardening is very beau-
tiful She carefully guards the seed until it is
ripe, then she bursts the imprisoning Avails and
gives it to the winds to distribute. Precisely
such method was used in disseminating Chris-
tianity. It was not for one people it was for
the healing of the nations, and its home was
wherever man abides.
Nearly five decades after Christ's death upon
the cross, Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus.
The home of Christianity was effaced. At just
the right moment the enclosing walls had
broken, and freed to the winds the germs in all
their primitive purity.
Imperial favor had not tarnished it, human
ambitions had not employed and degraded it,
nor had it been made into complex system by
ingenious casuists. The pure spiritual truth,
i8 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
unsullied as it came from the hand of its
founder, was scattered broadcast, as the band
of Christians dispersed throughout the Roman
Empire, naturally forming into communities
here and there, which became the centres of
Christian propagandism. Lyons in Gaul was
such a centre.
The fires of persecution had been lighted
here and there throughout the empire, and the
Emperor Nero, under whom the Apostles Peter
and Paul are said to have suffered martyrdom,
had amused himself by making torches of the
Christians at Rome. But until A.D. 177 Gaul
was exempt from sucli horrors.
Marcus Aurelius that peerless pagan
large in intelligence, exalted in character, and
guided by a conscientious rectitude which has
made his name shine like a star in the lurid light
of Roman history, still failed utterly to compre-
hend the significance of this spiritual kingdom
established by Christ on earth. He it was who
ordered the first persecution in Gaul. In pur-
suance of his command, horrible tortures were
inflicted at Lyons upon those who would not
abjure the new faith.
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 19
A letter, written by an eye-witness, pictures
with terrible vividness the scenes which fol-
lowed. Many cases are described with harrow-
ing detail, and of one Blandina it is said:
" From morn till eve they put her to all man-
ner of torture, marvelling that she still lived
with her body pierced through and through
and torn piecemeal by so many tortures, of
which a single one should have sufficed to kill
her; to which she only replied, ' I am a Chris-
tian/ "
The recital goes on to tell how she was then
cast into a dungeon her feet compressed and
dragged out to the utmost tension of the mus-
cles then left alone in darkness until new
methods of torture could be devised.
Finally she was brought, with other Chris-
tians, into the amphitheatre, hanging from a
cross to w r hich she was tied, and there thrown
to the beasts. As the beasts refused to touch
her she was taken back to the dungeon to be
reserved for another occasion, being brought
out daily to witness the fate and suffering of
her friends and fellow-martyrs ; still answering
the oft-repeated question, " I am a Christian."
The writer goes on to say, " After she had
20 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
undergone fire, the talons of beasts, and every
agony which could be thought of, she was
wrapped In a network and thrown to a bull,
who tossed her in the air " and her sufferings
were ended.
Truly it cost something to say " I am a Chris-
tian " in those clays.
Marcus Aurelius probably gave orders for
the persecution at Lyons, with little knowledge
of what would be the nature of those persecu-
tions, or of the religion he was trying to ex-
terminate. Some of the hours spent in writing
introspective essays would have been well em-
ployed in studying* the period in which he lived,
and the empire he ruled.
Paganism and Druidism, those twin mon-
sters, receded before the advancing light of
Christianity. Neither contained anything which
could nourish the soul of man, and both had
become simply badges of nationality.
Druidism was the last stronghold of inde-
pendent Gallic life. It was a mixture of north-
ern myth and oriental dreams of metempsycho-
sis, coarse, mystical, and cruel. The Roman
paganism which was superimposed by the con-
quering race was the mere shell of a once vital
A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE. 21
religion. Educated men had long ceased to
believe In the gods and divinities of Greece, and
it is said that the Roman augurs, while giving
their solemn prophetic utterances, could not
look at each other without laughing.
In the year 312 alas for Christianity! it
was espoused by imperial power. When the
Emperor Constantine declared himself a Chris-
tian, there was no doubt rejoicing among the
saints ; but it was the beginning of the degen-
eracy of the religion of Christ. The faith of
the humble was to be raised to a throne; its
lowly garb to be exchanged for purple and scar-
let ; the gospel of peace to be enforced by the
sword.
The empire was crumbling, and upon its
ruins the race of the future and social condi-
tions of modern times were forming. Pagan-
ism and Druidism would have been an im-
possibility. Christianity, even with its lustre
dimmed, its purity tarnished, its simplicity
overlaid with scholasticism, was better than
these. The miracle had been accomplished.
The great Roman Empire had said, "I am
Christian."
22 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
A belief in the gods of Parnassus, which
Rome had imposed upon Gaul, had now become
a heresy to be exterminated. If fires were
lighted at Lyons or elsewhere, they were for
the extermination not of Christians, but of
pagans, and of all who would depart from the
religion of Christ as interpreted by Rome. It
was a death-bed repentance for the cruel old
empire, a repentance which might delay, but
could not avert a calamitous ending, and an un-
expected event was near at hand which would
hasten the coming of the end.
It was in the year A.D. 375 that the Huns,
a terrible race of beings, came out from that
then mysterious but now historic region, lying
between China and Russia, and surged into
Europe under the leadership of Attila, sweep-
ing before them as they came Goths, Vandals,
and other Teutonic races, as if with a pre-
determined purpose of forcing the uncivilized
Teuton into the lap of a perishing civilization
in the south. Then having accomplished this,
after the defeat of Attila at Chalons in A.D.
453, they disappeared forever as a race from
the stage of human events.
This is the time when Paris was saved by
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 23
Genevieve, the poor sheperdess, who, like an
early Joan of Arc, awoke the people from the
apathy of despair, and led them to victory and
is rewarded by an immortality as " Saint Gene-
vieve/' the patron saint of Paris. It would
seem that the vigilance of the gentle saint has
either slept or been unequal to the task of pro-
tecting her city at times !
It was the combined forces of the Goth and
the Frank which drove this scourge out of
Europe. Meroveus, or Meroveg, the leader of
the Franks in this great achievement, once the
terror of the Gallic people, was now their de-
liverer. He had won the gratitude of all
classes, from bishops to slaves, throughout
Gaul, and fate had thus opened wide a door
leading into the future of that land.
CHAPTER IV.
GAUL had been Latinized and Christianized*
Now one more thing was needed to prepare her
for a great future. Her fibre was to be tough-
ened by the infusion of a stronger race. Julius
Csssar had shaken her into submission, and
Rome had chastised her into decency of be-
havior and speech, but as her manners improved
her native vigor declined. She took kindly to
Roman luxury and effeminacy, and could no
longer have thundered at the gates of her neigh-
bors demanding " land."
The despotism of a perishing Roman Em-
pire had become intolerable ; and the thoughts
of an overtaxed and enslaved people turned
naturally to the Franks. They had rescued
them from one terrible fate, might they not de-
liver them from another? And so it came
about that the young savage Chlodoveg, or
Clovis, grandson of Meroveus, found himself
24
.4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 25
master of the fair land long coveted beyond
the Rhine; and Gaul and Roman alike were
submerged beneath the Teuton flood, while
Clovis, sitting in the Palace of the Caesars, on
the island in the Seine, was wearing the kingly
crown, and independent and dynastic life had
commenced in what was hereafter to be not
Gaul, but France.
But the king of whom she had dreamed was
of her own race ; not this terrible Frank. Had
she exchanged one servitude for another?
Had she been, not set free, but simply annexed
to the realm of the barbarian across the Rhine?
Let us say rather that it was an espousal. She
had brought her dowry of beauty and " land,"
that most coveted of possessions, and had
pledged obedience, for which she was to be
cherished, honored, and protected, and to bear
the name of her lord.
It will be well not to examine too closely the
conversion of Clovis to Christianity, any more
than that of Constantine to the religion of
Christ, or that of Henry VIII. to Protestantism.
The only thing Clovis wanted of the gods was
aid in destroying his enemies. At a certain
dark moment, when the pagan deities failed
26 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
him, and the tide of battle was turning against
him, in desperation he offered to become a
Christian, if the God of the Christians would
save him. He kept his word. His victory
was followed by Christian baptism, and the
Church had won a great defender, whose fero-
cious instincts were thereafter to be directed
toward the extermination of unbelievers. And
while hewing and consolidating and bringing
his kingdom into form, whether by treacheries
or intrigues or assassination, this converted
Frank was not alone defender of the faith,
but of the orthodox faith. The Visigoth king-
dom in Spain was given over to that heresy
known as Arianism! So in a crusade, like
another of a later date, he swept them over
beyond the Pyrenees, thus establishing a fron-
tier which always remained.
Such were the rough beginnings of France^
geographically and historically.
Ancient heroes are said to be seen through
a shadowy lens, which magnifies their stature.
Let us hope that the crimes of the three or four
generations immediately succeeding Clovis have
been in like manner expanded ; for it is sicken-
ing to read of such monstrous prodigality of
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 27
wickedness ; whole families butchered hus-
bands, wives, children, anything obstructing
the path to the throne with an atrocity which
makes Richard III. seem a mere pigmy in the
art of intrigue and killing. The chapter closes
with the daughter and mother of kings (Bran-
hilde or Brunhaut), naked, and tied by one arm,
one leg, and her hair to the tail of an unbroken
horse, and amid jeers and shouts dashed over
the stones of Paris (A.D. 600).
Upon the death of Clovis his inheritance was
divided among four sons, who, with their wives
and families and their tempestuous passions,
afforded material for a great epic. Whether
Fredegunde or Brunhilde was the more terrible
who can say? But the story of these rival
queens, with their loves and their hatreds and
their ambitious, vengeful fury, is more like the
story of demons than of women. But these
conditions led to two results which played a
great part in subsequent events. One was the
exclusion of women from the succession by the
adoption of the Salic Law. Then, in order to
curb the degeneracy or to reinforce the in-
efficiency of the hereditary ruler, there was
created the office of Maire du Palais, a modest
28 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
title which contained the germ of the future,
not alone of France, but of the world.
To imperfect human vision it would have
seemed at the time a fatal mistake to bury out
of sight the refinements which a Latin civiliza-
tion had been for nearly five centuries planting
in Gaul. But so often has this been repeated
in the history of the world, one is compelled
to recognize it as a part of the evolutionary
method. Again and again have we seen old.
civilizations effaced by barbarians. But these
barbarians with their coarseness and brutality
have usually brought something better than re-
finement ; a spirit so transforming, so vitalizing,
that we are compelled to believe it was the end
sought in the catastrophe we deplore: that is,
a spirit of liberty, a sense of personal inde-
pendence, without which the refinements of
art, even reinforced by genius, are unavailing.
Such was undoubtedly the invigorating leaven
brought into Gaul by the Frank, although for
a time he succumbed to the enervating Gallic
influence, and, while conquering and subduing,
was himself conquered and subdued.
The cultivated Roman in his toga appealed
to the imagination of the fine barbarian; the
A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE. 29
habits of the Romanized cities were a tempt-
ing model for imitation. Bridges, aqueducts,
palaces, with their splendid mingling of strength
and beauty, fragments of which still linger to
convince us of our inferiority, these were awe-
inspiring to the Frank and filled him with long-
ings to drink deep at this fountain of civiliza-
tion. The heroic strain brought by Clovis was
quickly enfeebled and debauched by luxury.
The court of the Merovingian king- became a
miserable assemblage of half-Romanized bar-
barians covered with the frayed and worn-out
mantle of imperialism. It is a strange picture
we have of this descendant of Clovis, this Roi
Faineant (Do-nothing King) in a royal proces-
sion on a state occasion. Curled and perfumed,
he emerges from the Palais des Thermes, at-
tended in great pomp by Romans and Roman-
ized Prankish warriors. Then, in remembrance
of the primitive simplicity of his ancestral line,
sitting alone in a wagon drawn by bullocks, he
leads the pageant through the narrow streets
of old Paris.
But while masquerading as a simple barba-
rian he was only a poor imitator of the vices and
dregs of a perishing civilization. But In proof
30 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
that virility was still a characteristic of the
Frank in Gaul, we are told that while the
Church and the offices of State were filled by
Romans or Gallo-Romans, the army at this
time was composed entirely of Franks.
With the degeneracy of these Rois Faineants
the kingdom of Clovis was gradually shrink-
ing, and men were already waiting to seize
the power as it fell from incompetent hands.
When Clovis made gifts of large estates to>
reward, or to purchase, followers, Roman or
Gallic, he laid the foundations of a system
which would prove fatal to his successors.
With these estates came titles and authority,
multiplying and growing with each succeed-
ing reign. A count, who was the chief officer
of a county, was in fact the sovereign of a
small state, and so on a smaller scale were
a duke or a marquis. And it w r as to these
smaller bodies that the power naturally gravi-
tated as it vanished from the throne.
This meant disintegration into helpless frag-
ments, and this meant the end of a Frankish
kingdom, unless some power should arise great"
enough to compel the crumbling state to become
homogeneous.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 31
It was a Romanized-Frankish family dwell-
ing in the Valley of the Rhine which saved the
kingdom of Clovis from this fate. France had
already fallen apart into an eastern and a
western kingdom, known respectively as Aus-
trasia and Neustria. A certain Duke of Aus-
trasia, known as Pepin the Elder, was the
forerunner of the Carlovingian line of kings.
With him the centralizing force began to work
with saving power. The one end kept in view
was the restoration of the power of kingship
the strengthening of the power at the centre.
To this end, from generation to generation,
these early Pepins steadily moved. In 687
Pepin the Younger, grandson of the Elder,
by a victory at Testry over Neustria, brought
together these two sundered divisions under
himself, with the new title Duke of the Franks.
The Pepins had already succeeded in making
the office of Maire du Palais hereditary in their
family, and in the year A.D. 732, Charles, son
and successor of Pepin the Younger, made
himself forever the hero not of France alone,
but of Christendom, by driving the Saracen
invasion back over the Pyrenees, and was in
turn succeeded by his son, Pepin the Short, who
32 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
seized the Merovingian crown itself; this re-
markable family, the appointed channel for the
centralizing forces, reaching its climax in his
son Charlemagne, creator of a Holy Roman
Empire.
There had appeared an enemy to the true
faith more to be feared than paganism.
Less than one hundred years after the death
of Clovis, there had come out of Asia, that
birthplace of religions, a new faith, which was
destined to be for centuries the scourge of
Christendom, and which to-day rules one-third
of the human family. Zoroaster, Buddha,
Christ, had successively come with saving mes-
sage to humanity, and now (A.D. 600) Ma-
homet believed himself divinely appointed to
drive out of Arabia the idolatry of ancient
Magianism (the religion of Zoroaster).
Christianity had passed through strange
vicissitudes. Kings, emperors, popes, and
bishops had been terrible custodians of its
truths; and while many still held it in its primi-
tive purity, ecclesiastics were fiercely fighting
over the nature of the Trinity, the divinity of
the Virgin Mother, and the Church was shaken
to Its foundation by furious factions.
J SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 33
In this hour of weakness the Persians (A.D.
590) had conquered Asia Minor. Bethlehem,
Gethsemane, and Calvary were profaned; the
Holy Sepulchre had been burned, and the cross
carried off amid shouts of laughter. Magias-
ism had insulted Christianity, and no miracle
had interposed! The heavens did not roll
asunder, nor did the earth open her abysses to
swallow them up. There was consternation
and doubt in Christendom.
Such was the state of the Church when Ma-
hometanism came into existence. " There
is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet."
Such was its battle-cry and its creed, and the
moral precepts of the Koran were its gospel.
There seems nothing in this to account for the
mad enthusiasm and the passion for worship
in its followers. But in less than a hundred
years this lion out of Arabia had subjugated
Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Northern Africa,
and the Spanish Peninsula. Now, sword in
one hand and the Koran in the other, the Ma-
hometan had crossed the Pyrenees and was in
Southern Gaul.
Under the strange magic of this faith the
largest religious empire the world had known
34 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
had sprung into existence, stretching from the
Chinese Wall to the Atlantic ; from the Caspian
to the Indian Ocean; and Jerusalem, the me-
tropolis of Christianity Jerusalem, the Mecca
of the Christian was lost! The Crescent
floated over the birthplace of our Lord, and,
notwithstanding the temporary successes of the
Crusades, it does to this day.
If the Pyrenees were passed the very ex-
istence of Christendom was threatened. Charles
Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne,
averted this danger when he stayed the infidel
flood at the battle of Tours, A.D. 732.
The Merovingian kings, if not devout, were
faithful sons of the Church, and when the pope
appealed to the last Merovingian king to pro-
tect him from the Lombards, near the end of
the eighth century, Pepin, then Maire du Palais,
but holding supreme power, twice crossed the
Alps with an army, wrested five cities and a
large extent of territory from the enemies of
the pope, which, upon parting, he tossed as
a gift into the lap of the Church. And this,
known as the Donation of Pepin, was the
beginning of the temporal power of the popes
in Italy. So when Pepin resolved to assume
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 35
the crown, Pope Zacharias in gratitude sanc-
tioned the audacious act, by sending his repre-
sentative to place the symbol of power upon the
head of this faithful son and usurper! (A.D.
But this was only the stepping-stone for a
greater elevation. When Pope Adrian I. again
needed protection from the Lombard, a greater
than Pepin was wearing the crown his fathei
.had audaciously snatched.
CHAPTER V.
AGAINST the dark background of European
history, and with the broad level of obscurity
stretching over the ages at its feet, there rises
one shining pinnacle. Considered as man or
sovereign, Charlemagne is one of the most im-
pressive figures in history. His seven feet of
stature clad in shining steel, his masterful grasp
of the forces of his time, his splendid intelli-
gence, instinct even then with the modern spirit,
all combine to elevate him in solitary grandeur.
Charlemagne found France in disorder meas-
ureless, and apparently insurmountable. Bar-
barian invasion without, and anarchy within;
Saxon paganism pressing in upon the north,
and Asiatic Islamism upon the south and west ;
a host of forces struggling for dominion in a
nation brutish, ignorant, and without cohesion.
It is the attribute of genius to discern oppor-
tunity where others see nothing. Charlemagne
36
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 37
saw rising out of this chaos a great resuscitated
Roman Empire, which should be at the same
time a spiritual and Christian empire as well.
Saxons, Slavs, Huns, Lombards, Arabs, came
under his compelling grasp ; these antagonistic
races all held together by the force of one
terrible will, in unnatural combination with
France. No political liberties, no popular as-
semblies discussing public measures; it is
Charlemagne alone who fills the picture; it is
absolutism marked by prudence, ability, and
grandeur, but still, absolutism.
The pope looked approvingly upon this son
of the Church, by whose order 4,500 pagan
heads could be cut off in one day, and a whole
army compelled to baptism in an afternoon.
Here was a champion to be propitiated.
Charlemagne, on the other hand, saw in the
Church the most compliant and effective means
to empire.
His fertile mind was conceiving a vast de-
sign by which he might reign over a resusci-
tated Roman Empire. In the dual sovereignty
of his dream, the pope was to be the spiritual
and he the temporal head. Mutually dependent
upon each other, the election of the pope would
38 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
not be valid without his consent. Nor would
the emperor be emperor until crowned by the
pope. The Church might use him as a sword,
but he would wear the Church as a precious
j ewel in his crown.
It was a splendid dream, splendidly realized;
the most imposing of human successes, and the
most impressive of human failures. It seems
designed as a lesson for the human race in the
transitory nature of power applied from with-
out.
A pyramid of such colossal proportions could
only be kept from falling in pieces by another
Colossus like himself. The vast fabric resting
upon one human will, passed with its creator ;
was gone like a shadow when he was gone.
It will be remembered that the Roman Em-
pire in its decay fell into two parts, a Western
and an Eastern empire. The dying embers o
the Western empire, which had been fanned
into a feeble flame in the sixth century by Jus-
tinian, Emperor of the East, were threatened
with complete extinguishment by the Lom-
bards in the eighth ; from which calamity they
were saved, as we have seen, by Pepin. So
when the Franks were again appealed to,
From the painting by Levy.
Coronation of Charlemagne.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 39
Charlemagne saw his opportunity. With
plans fully matured he responded, and with the
consent and acquiescence of the pope he took
formal possession of the whole of Italy, annex-
ing to his own dominions the crumbling wreck
of a magnificent past. And when Leo III.
placed upon his head the crown, and pro-
nounced " Carolus-Magnus, by the grace of
God Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire "
(A.D. 800), the authority of the pope was placed
upon unassailable heights, and France had
become the centre of a world-wide dominion.
Little did pope or emperor dream of what
was to happen ; that after a brief and dazzling
interlude the imperial crown would never be
worn in France ; and that the popes would for
centuries be insulted and treated as contuma-
cious vassals by German emperors. And
France France, the centre of this dream of a
magnificent unity in less than fifty years, with
her native incohesiveness, and in the irony of
fate, would have broken into fifty-nine frag-
ments, loosely held together by a feeble Carlo-
vingian king.
The plan of a dual sovereignty of pope and
emperor might have been wise had both been
40 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE,
immortal! But it was the triple division of
the empire brought about by Charlemagne's
three grandsons which overthrew the entire
scheme of its founder.
Upon the death of Charlemagne, in A.D. 814,
the crown and the sceptre of the empire passed
to his son Louis (the later form of Clovis).
This feeble son of Charlemagne, known as
Louis the Debonnaire, struggled under the
weight of the crumbling mass until his death
in 840. Then Charlemagne's three ambitious
grandsons fought for the great inheritance.
Lothaire, who claimed the whole by right of
primogeniture, was defeated at the battle of
Fontenay in Burgundy, and by the treaty of
Verdun in 843 the partition of the empire was
consummated; the title of emperor passing to
Lothaire, the eldest, along with Italy and a strip
of territory extending to the North Sea, all west
of that being arbitrarily called France, and all
east of it Germany.
So the European drama was unfolding upon
lines entirely unexpected. Not only had the
empire fallen apart into three grand divisions,
but France itself was disintegrating, was in
fact a mass of rival states, with counts, princes,
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 41
marquises, and a score of other petty potentates
struggling for supremacy.
The rough outlines of something greater than
France the outlines of a future Europe were
being drawn. It is easy to see now what was
then so incomprehensible : that from the chaos
of barbarism left by the Teuton flood, there
were emerging in that ninth century a group of
states with definite outlines, and the larger
organism of Europe was coming into form.
The treaty of Verdun (843) had roughly sepa-
rated Italy, France, and Germany. At the same
time the Heptarchy in Britain had been con-
solidated into England under King Alfred;
while an obscure Scandinavian adventurer
named Rurik, quite unobserved, was bringing
into political unity, and reigning at Kieff as
Grand Duke over what was to become Rus-
sia. Spain, quite apart from all this move-
ment, had entered upon those seven centuries
of struggle with Saracen and Moor, that
struggle of unmatched devotion and tenacity
of purpose which is really the great epic of
history.
Those ambitious and too powerful vassals
were not the greatest evils menacing the Carlo-
42 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
vingian kings. It was the incessant invasions
of a race of barbarians coming out of the north,
which was going to bury the past under a ruin
of a different sort. There seemed no defence
from these Northmen, as they were called, who
swarmed like destroying insects upon the coast,
up the rivers, and over the lands ; three times
sacked Paris, the scars to-day being visible in
that impressive Roman ruin, the Palais des
Thcnncs, the home of the Caesars, and of
the Merovingian kings, which they partially
burned.
Fortified castles with towers and moats and
drawbridges sprang up all over the kingdom
for the protection of the rich. After seven in-
vasions all the old cities, Rouen, Nantes, Bor-
deaux, Toulouse, Orleans, Beauvais, had been
devastated, and France in coat of mail was hid-
ing behind stone walls.
In looking through the vista of centuries it
is easy to read the eternal purpose in the chain
of cause and effect; and also to see that events,
no less than kings, have their pedigrees. The
terrible child of the Northman was the Feudal
System; which was again the father of those
romantic and picturesque children, the Cm-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 43
sades; and these, the creators of a European
civilization, whose children \ve are !
Who can imagine the course of history with
any one of these removed each an apparently
inevitable step in the unfolding of a mighty de-
sign, utterly incomprehensible at the time?
CHAPTER VI.
SOMEONE has said that " the Lord must like
common people, because he made so many of
them." The path for the common people in
France at this time led through heavy shadows.
But a darker time was approaching. A sys-
tem of oppression was maturing which was
soon to envelop them in the obscurity of dark-
est night.
Those Scandinavian freebooters called
Northmen, and later Normans, were the
scourge of the kingdom. Nothing was safe
from their insolent courage and rapacity.
The rich could intrench themselves in stone
fortresses, with moats and drawbridges, and
be in comparative security, but the poor were
utterly defenceless against this perennial de-
stroyer. The result was a compact between the
powerful and the weak, which was the begin-
ning of the feudal system. It was in effect an
exchange of protection for service and fealty.
44
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 45
You give us absolute control of your persons
your military service when required, and a
portion of your substance and the fruit of your
toil and we will in exchange give you our
fortified castles as a refuge from the North-
men. Such was the offer. It was a choice
between vassalage, serfdom, or destruction out-
right.
Simple enough in its beginnings, this became
a ramified system of oppression, a curious net-
work of authority, ingeniously controlling an
entire people. The conditions upon which was
engrafted this compact were of great antiquity,
had indeed been brought across the Rhine by
the German conquerors ; but the Northmen were
the impelling cause of the swift development
of feudalism in France.
Charlemagne had felt grave apprehensions
of evil from these robber incursions, but could
not have conceived of a result such as this, the
most oppressive system ever fastened upon a
nation, and one w r hich would at the same time
sap the foundations of royalty itself.
The theory was that the king was absolute
owner of all the territory; the great lords hold-
ing their titles from him on condition of mili-
46 A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE.
tary service, their vassals pledging military ser-
vice and obedience to them again on similar
terms, and sub-vassals again to them repeating
the pledge ; and so on in descending chain, until
at last the serf, that wretched being whom none
Jooks up to nor fears, is ground to powder
beneath the superimposed mass ; no appeal from
the authority, no escape from the caprice or
cruelty of his feudal lord. Could any scales
weigh, could any words measure the suffering
which must have been endured ? Is it strange
that, with every aspiration thwarted, hope
stifled, Europe sank into the long sleep of the
Middle Ages?
It is easy to conceive that, under such a sys-
tem, where all the affairs of the realm were
adjusted by individual rulers with unlimited
power, and where the great barons could make
war upon each other without authorization
from the king, by the time this nominal head of
the entire system was reached there remained
nothing for him to do. In fact, there was not
left one vestige of kingly authority, and Carlo-
vingian rulers were almost as insignificant as
their Merovingian predecessors. France had,
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 47
instead of one great sovereign, one hundred and
fifty petty ones !
In A.D. 911 the Northmen were offered the
province henceforth known as Normandy, upon
condition of their acceptance of the religion
and submission to the laws of the realm.
Rollo, the disreputable robber-chief, took the
oath of fealty to the King of France, his suze-
rain, and Christian baptism transformed him
into respectable, law-abiding Robert, Duke of
Normandy.
So, the enemy had become a vassal. The
pirate of the North Sea had taken his place
among the Christian chivalry of Europe, as one
of the twelve peers of France. It was less than
a century since the death of Charlemagne, and
the office of king had grown almost as help-
less as in the period of the Rois Faineants.
Under the stress of the continuous invasions,
by perfectly natural process the central author-
ity had passed to the feudal magnates. Many of
the feudal states had actually organized into in-
dependent governing bodies. The struggle with
the Northmen ended, France, dismembered, ex-
hausted, was lying prostrate. A king stripped
of every kingly attribute at one extreme of the
48 A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE.
social system, and a people trampled into the
very dust by feudal oppression at the other.
Owners of nothing, not even of themselves, they
might not fish in the streams, nor hunt in the
forests, unless the privilege was bestowed ; and
with their lives spent in fighting the incessant
private wars of their lords, there seemed no
room for them in the world, nor for hope in
their hearts. With the king effaced, and the
people effaced, there remained only bands of
feudal barons trying to efface each other !
As in the last days of the Merovingians,
light came from an unexpected quarter. The
tide turned toward centralization. Robert the
Strong, a man of obscure family, who had
laid down his life in a very heroic resistance to
the Northmen, had won the titles " Count of
Paris " and " Duke of France," which he be-
queathed, with the estates attached to them, to
his successors.
Somewhat after the manner of the Pepins,
this powerful and resourceful family by sheer
native ability grasped one after another the
sources of power in the state ; and in the year
987 the dynasty established by Pepin disap-
peared, and Hugh Capet, Count of Paris and
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 49
Abbot, was declared by the Pope of Rome to be
" King of France, in virtue of his great deeds."
It was the ecclesiastical office of this descendant
of Robert the Strong which gave the name to
the dynasty that had come to save France a
second time from disintegration. Because he
was the wearer of the Chape, or Cope, the
name Chapet, or Capet, became that of the
line.
There now commenced a struggle between
the antagonistic principles of royalty and aris-
tocracy; a conflict which was going to last
nearly five centuries, covering that dreary twi-
light known as the Dark Ages a time when,
had it not been for the Christian Church and
for the torch of the Saracen in Spain, the light
of civilization would really have been extin-
guished, and the slender thread of connection
with a great past have been broken.
In the helpless misery existing in France at
this time, the Church saw its opportunity. To
that silent, humble, forgotten multitude with-
out life or hope in the world, she offered refuge,
peace, consolation, and thus forever bound to
her the poor of Christendom; by this means
establishing in the end an ecclesiastical domin-
SO A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
ion to which kings and peerage would be com-
pelled to bow.
If one would know how kings submitted to
the authority of the Church at this time, let
him read the story of the good King Robert,
second in the Capetian line, who for marrying
the gentle Bertha, his cousin fourth removed,
suffered the punishment of excommunication;
was treated as a moral leper in his own palace ;
cut off from contact with human kind and
from sound of human voice; the dishes from
which he ate, the clothes he w r ore, destroyed,
until repentant and heart-broken they consented
to part and to break the bond of their union
forever.
It was the despair in the heart of the nation
which gave intensity to the religious instinct
at this time. And when pestilence came, and
neither rich nor poor could escape, conscience-
stricken barons also trembled. A belief began
to prevail that the end of the world was at hand.
Did not the Book of Revelation say that one
thousand years from the birth of Christ the
great dragon was to be let loose and the earth
was to be destroyed ?
As the hour of doom approached, labor
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. $1
ceased, the fields were untouched, and when to
pestilence and despair was added famine, then
men's hearts failed them even under coats of
mail. The Church came to the rescue with the
" Truce of God," which, in the hope of appeas-
ing an avenging God, forbade private wars
during certain periods in the ecclesiastical year.
Repentant barons, with a similar hope, made
peace with their neighbors, and their swords
rusted as they built monasteries and chapels;
or some not yet obtaining peace, and perhaps
restless with their occupation gone, made pil-
grimages to Rome, to pray at the graves of
Peter and Paul, and still others even to Jeru-
salem, that the breath from Calvary might
whiten their sin-steeped souls.
It is interesting to note that among these
penitent pilgrims, sixty years before the first
Crusade, was that Duke of Normandy known
as " Robert the Devil/' whose pagan ancestor
only a century before had been the terror of
European civilization, and whose son, thirty
years later, w T as to wear the crown of England.
In this way were the currents setting steadily
toward the Holy Sepulchre as the panacea for
human woes which were sent by an avenging
52 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
God. These were the first stirrings of the
breath of the coming storm which in eight suc-
cessive waves was soon to sweep over Europe.
The way was preparing for the great event of
the Middle Ages.
Whatever its motives, the abstaining from
slaughter, and the building of cathedrals and
monasteries and abbeys, was weaving a mantle
of beauty for France, which she still proudly
wears. And the greatest of the builders was
the Duke of Normandy ; and it is to his duke-
dom the art student turns for the most per-
fect blending of grace and grandeur, character-
istic of the early style. The marvel to which
this is intended to draw attention is the pre-
eminent position swiftly attained in France by
this brilliant race, in every department of liv-
ing. It would seem that France did not adopt
this terrible child from the north, but that he
adopted France, and changed and gave color
to her whole future. It was a tempestuous ele-
ment, but it was new life, and it is impossible
to conceive of what that country would have
been without this stimulating, brilliant infusion
into its national life.
With such marvellous facility did this people
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. S3
adopt the speech and manners of their neigh-
bors, that in the year 1066 they were prepared
to instruct the Britons in the ways of a more
polished civilization. Only a century before
the birth of William the Conqueror, his ances-
tors had lived by looting. They were high-
waymen and robbers by profession. His
mother, a Norman peasant girl, daughter of a
tanner, won the love of that gay duke known
as " Robert the Devil." William, the child of
this unconsecrated union, upon the death of his
father succeeded to the dukedom. One of the
steps in the rapid climb of this family of Rollo
had been a marriage connecting them with the
royal family of England. King Edward, Will-
iam's remote cousin, died without an heir.
Here was an opportunity. With sixty thou-
sand Norman adventurers like himself, William
started with the desperate purpose of invading
England and wresting the crown from his
cousin Harold.
It was not the first time the Northman had
invaded England. But never before had he
come bringing a higher civilization, and under
the banner of the Church! In a few weeks
Harold, last king of the Saxons, was dead, and
54 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. .
William, Duke of Normandy, was William L,
King of England.
Philip, King of France, saw with dismay his
richest province ruled by a king of England,
and his own vassal wearing a crown with power
superior to his own ! A door had thus opened
through which would enter entangling compli-
cations and countless woes in the future.
While William was trampling England into
the dust, and with pitiless hand rivetting a feu-
dal chain upon the Saxons, another and greater
centre of power was developing at Rome, where
the monk Hildebrand, who had now become
Pope Gregory VII., claimed a universal sov-
ereignty from which there was no appeal.
Christ was King of Kings. So, as His vice-
gerent upon earth, the authority of the pope
was absolute in Christendom.
The moment of this supreme elevation in the
Church was reached at Canossa, 1072, when
Henry, the excommunicated Emperor of Ger-
many, came barefooted, in winter, and pros-
trated himself before Gregory VII. If Charle-
magne had worn the Church as a precious jewel
in his crown in the ninth century, now in the
eleventh the Church wore all the European
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 55
states as a tiara of jewels in her mitre. With
supreme wisdom, and with a sure instinct for
power, her supremacy had been rooted first in
the hearts of the people, then the mailed hand
laid upon their rulers.
CHAPTER VII.
THE corner-stone of the social structure in
France was the dogma that work was degrad-
ing; and not only manual labor, but anything
done with the object of producing wealth was
a degradation. The only honorable occupation
for a gentleman was either to pray or to fight.
Society in France was, therefore, divided
into three classes : the Clergy, called the " First
Estate " ; the Nobility, composing the " Second
Estate," and the working and trading classes,
the " Third Estate/ 7 or Tiers Etat.
Out of reverence for their spiritual office,,
precedence in rank was given to the clergy.
But the actual ruling class was the nobility.
The business of the clergy was to minister to
souls. The business of the nobility was war-
fare. That of the third estate, the toiling class,
being to support the other tzvo. And whatever
existed in the form of property or wealth in
feudal times was produced by the Tiers Etat.
56
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. S7
The lowest stratum of the third estate was
composed of " serfs." A serf belonged abso-
lutely, with all that he possessed, to his lord.
He was attached to his land, as are the trees
which are rooted in it. There was, however, a
class of serfs above this whom we should now
call slaves, but who were by French law then
designated as Freemen.
A freeman might go and come under certain
restrictions. But this did not by any means
imply that he was freed from the proprietor to
whom he belonged, to whom he was inevitably
bound for military service, or for such contri-
butions or claims as might be levied upon him.
As was to be expected, it was in the cities
that this half-emancipated class congregated;
these cities as naturally becoming the centres
of the various industries required to supply the
necessities and luxuries of the two ruling
classes. In this way there were being created
various centres of wealth, which meant power,
and which would have to be reckoned with in
the future.
The thin edge of the wedge was inserted
when individual freemen offered money to their
hard-pressed feudal lords in exchange for cer-
58 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
tain privileges, and then for charters. And as
more money was needed by proprietors for their
lavish expenditures, more freedom and more
charters were acquired, until, having purchased
Immunities and privileges enough to make them
to some extent self-governing, the town became
what was called a commune.
It was Louis VI, fifth king in the Capetian
line, who completed this work of emancipation
by recognizing the communes as free cities,
and bestowing franchises clearly defining their
rights. By this act the body of the manufac-
turing class, or "burgesses, was recognized as a
part of the body politic, and was enfranchised.
A free city was a small republic. The en-
tire body of inhabitants must take the communal
oath, and when summoned by the tolling of the
bell must all appear at the meeting of the Gen-
eral Assembly for the purpose of choosing their
magistrates. This done, the assembly dis-
solved, and the magistrates were left with a
free hand to rule or ruin, until checked by popu-
lar outbreak or a new election.
As is always the case, time developed two
classes : an inferior population, with a furious
spirit of democracy, and a superior class, more
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 59
conservative, and desirous of keeping peace
with the great proprietors.
In this simple, humble fashion were the peo-
ple groping toward freedom, and experiment-
ing with the alphabet of self-government.
The acknowledgment of the free cities by
Louis VI., was the first move toward an alliance
between the king and the people; an alliance
which would eventually wrest the power from
the hands of the nobles. But that end was still
far off. Another accession to the kingly power
came in the succeeding reign when Louis VII.
married Eleanor, daughter of the Duke of
Aquitaine; and her great inheritance, the lar-
gest of the feudal states, was thereby annexed
to the crown: a marriage which made some
troublesome chapters in the history of two king-
doms, of which we shall hear later. But, in
the duel between king and peerage, the balance
of power was moving toward the throne.
At the time these things were happening that
great event, the Crusades, had already com-
menced.
It was in 1095 that Peter the Hermit, re-
turning from a pilgrimage, by command of the
Pope went throughout Europe proclaiming the
60 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
desecration of the holy places. At a council
held at Clermont in France, 1095, tae nrst Cru-
sade was proclaimed by Urban II. Led by
Peter the Hermit, a vast undisciplined host,
without preparation, rushed indiscriminately
toward Asia Minor, perishing by famine, dis-
ease, and the sword before they reached their
goal. Undismayed by this, another Crusade
was immediately organized under the direction
of the greatest nobles in France; and in three
years (1099) the Holy City had been cap-
tured, the Cross floated over the Holy Sepul-
chre, and Godfrey of Boulogne, leader of the
expedition, was proclaimed King of Jerusalem.
France had inaugurated the most extraordi-
nary movement in the history of civilization.
Appealing as it did to the knightly and to the
romantic ideal, what an opportunity was here
for idle adventurous nobles, their occupation
gone through changed conditions! If the
Church, by 4t the Truce of God," had bid them
sheathe their swords, now she bade them to be
drawn in the defence of all that was sacred. The
entire body of nobility would have rushed if it
could to the Holy Land. Poor barons sold or
mortgaged their lands and their castles, and the
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 6l
Third Estate grew rich, and the free cities still
freer, upon the necessities of the hour. But
all classes, from king to serf, were for the first
time moved by a common sentiment; and not
alone France, but the choicest and best of
Europe was poured in one great volume of pas-
sionate zeal into those successive waves which
eight times inundated Palestine. Private in-
terests sacrificed or forgotten, life, treasure, all
eagerly given, for what ? That a small bit of
territory a thousand miles distant be torn from
profaning infidels, because it was the birth-
place of a religion these champions failed to
comprehend ; a religion worn upon their battle-
flags but not in their hearts.
The second Crusade, 1147, was -led by Con-
rad, Emperor of Germany, and Louis VII. of
France. The profligate conduct of Queen
Eleanor, who accompanied her royal consort,
led to serious political conditions. Louis ap-
pealed to the pope, who consented to the divorce
he desired. This proved simply an exchange
of thrones for the fascinating Eleanor. Henry
II. of England, already the possessor of im-
mense estates in France, inherited from his
father,, realized that with Aquitaine, Queen
62 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Eleanor's dowry, added to his own, and these
again to Normandy, a marriage with the di-
vorced wife of his rival would make him pos-
sessor of more than three times the size of the
domain controlled by the French king.
The marriage was solemnized in 1152, and
France saw her war with the feudal barons
overshadowed by the fight for her very life with
England, who had fastened this tremendous
grasp upon her kingdom.
The first truly great Capetian king came
with this emergency. Philip Augustus, son of
Louis VIL, in the year 1180, when only fifteen
years of age, seized the reins with the hand of
a born ruler. Before he was twenty-one he had
broken up a combination of feudal barons
against him. Then he turned to England.
Queen Eleanor and her sons were conspiring
against Henry II. So he made friends with
them. The palace on the island in the Seine
was an asylum where John and Richard might
plot against their father. And when a third
Crusade was planned, 1189, it had as leaders
Philip Augustus of France, Richard L, who had
just succeeded his father, Henry II., as King of
England, and Barbarossa (Frederick L), the
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 63
great Emperor of Germany. Before the Holy
Land was reached the wise and crafty Philip
Augustus and the fiery Richard had quarrelled.
Philip had been carefully observing these two
brothers who were successively to wear the
crown of England. He knew the foibles of the
romantic and picturesque Richard ; and he also
knew that John, corrupt to the core, was a trai-
tor to whom no trust would be sacred. In his
own cold-blooded fashion he intended to use
them both.
John had conspired against his own father,
now Philip would help him to supplant his
brother, while Richard was safely occupied in
Palestine. And when he had made John king,
he, Philip Augustus, was to be rewarded by
the gift of Normandy! With this in view,
Philip returned to France. It was an ingen-
ious plot, but all was spoiled by Richard's safe
return from the thrilling adventures of the Cru-
sade. In 1199, however, the crown passed
naturally to John by the death of his brother,
and this vicious son of Eleanor was King of
England.
There were other means of recovering his
lost possessions. Philip espoused the cause of
64 A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE.
the young Arthur, John's nephew, a rival claim-
ant to the English throne. And when that ill-
fated Prince was murdered, as is believed by
the orders of his uncle, for this and other of-
fences King John, as Duke of Normandy
thence vassal to the King of France was sum-
moned to be tried by his peers.
When after oft-repeated summons John re-
fused to appear at Philip's court, by feudal law
the King of France had legal authority to take
possession of the dukedom.
In vain did King John strive to defend by
arms his vanishing- possessions. In the war
which ensued, all north of the Loire was seized
by Philip, and at one stroke he had mastered
his enemies at home and abroad.
Not only were Normandy, Anjou, Touraine,
and Poitou restored to France, but they were
hereafter to be held, not by dukes and counts, as
before, but by the king, as a part of the royal
domain. And kingship, towering high above
all the great barons of France, had for the first
time become a reality.
It was Philip's policy of expansion which
gave color to his reign ; not an expansion which
would bring extension into foreign lands, but
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 65
solidity and firmness of outline to France itself.
We have seen how and why this policy was vig-
orously carried out in the north. The growth
toward the south is a less pleasant story.
The province of Toulouse, nominally subject
to France, was actually ruled by Raymond VI.,
" by grace of God " Count of Toulouse. Per-
haps if this province had not possessed and
controlled several ports on the Mediterranean,
while France had none at all, it might not have
been discovered that this home of the "gay
science/ 7 and of minstrelsy, and of all that was
gentle and refining, was in fact the nursery of
a dangerous heresy, and that the poetic, music-
loving children of Provence reviled the cross
and worshipped the devil !
We can easily imagine that in this highly
developed community there had arisen a spirit
of inquiry into prevailing conditions and beliefs
in the Church. And we can also imagine that
a crafty sovereign saw in this an opportunity
to serve his own ends. And so, Pope Inno-
cent III. ordered a Crusade, and John de Mont-
fort not only opened up the Mediterranean
ports for Philip, but brought Toulouse, the
greatest of the remaining feudal states, into sub-
66 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
jection to the King of France ; at the same time
forever silencing the voice of the heretic, of the
minstrel, and of the harp; even the speech,
with its delicate inflections and musical into-
nations, disappeared, to be heard nevermore.
Such, in brief, is the story of the " Albigensian
War/' so called on account of the heresy hav-
ing been brought into Provence by the Albi-
genses from Switzerland.
After a century and a half Normandy was
restored. Its reabsorption into France marked
the parting of the ways in two kingdoms.
Kingship was reinforced in one, and citizen-
ship developed in the other. In England the
nobles and the people drew closer together,
resolved to defend themselves from a vicious
king, and this determined effort to curtail the
royal prerogative produced the Magna Charta,
which forever secured the liberties of English-
men (1215). In France, on the contrary, the
power was moved in one volume toward the
king and despotism. Both nations were in the
hands of fate a fate, too, which was using
unscrupulous men to accomplish its great pur-
poses for each.
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 67
But however we may disparage Philip's
heart and aims, no one can deny the breadth
and superiority of his mind and his statesman-
ship. He was a Charlemagne made on a
smaller scale, and without a conscience. Not
one of the successors of Clovis or of Pepin had
so intelligently grasped the sources of per-
manent growth in a nation. He may have been
false of tongue and unprincipled in deed, but
he took the free cities under his personal protec-
tion, opened up trade with foreign lands, beau-
tified Paris and France. He may, under the
cloak of religion, have permitted unjustifiable
cruelties against the most innocent, the most
gifted province in Europe, in order to secure
access to the sea for France. But he left the
communes richer and happier, his kingdom
freer from local tyrannies, transformed from a
pandemonium of struggling knights and bar-
ons into the nearest approach yet realized to
a modern state.
CHAPTER VIII.
IF the Crusades had strengthened the power
of the Church, they had at the same time
brought about an expansion of thought which
was undermining it. Men were beginning to
think, to inquire, and then to doubt. How
could sensuality and vice at Rome be reconciled
with a divine infallibility? If the ballad-
poetry of Provence satirized the lives and man-
ners of the priests, was it not dealing with
what was true?
During the reign of Philip's father, a pale r
studious youth was pacing the cloisters on the
banks of the Seine, by the side of Notre Dame.
He was thinking upon these things. And " as
he mused the fire burned." This was Abelard.
The intellectual awakening brought about by
the lectures of this most learned and accom-
plished man of his time produced an epoch. He
spoke to his disciples in the open air, as no build-
ing could hold the thousands who hung upon
68
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 69
his lips. This movement became localized; a
faubourg of students was created with their
multiform activities. It became a quarter by
itself a noisy, turbulent, agitated quarter
where the only luxury enjoyed was an expand-
ing thought, and where Latin was the spoken
language. And so it happened that the Qnar-
tier Latin came into existence.
But while the place remains, the man quickly
passed off the scene. He w r as silenced, his
teachings condemned by a Church council at
Soissons, and he immured for life in the Mon-
astery of Cluny, to be treasured in the heart of
humanity as a martyr to truth, and as the lover
of Eloise, in that sad romance of the twelfth
century.
After a brief reign of three years Louis
VIII. , son and successor of Philip, was dead,
and Louis IX., under the regency of his mother,
" Blanche of Castile," was proclaimed king.
The same family, which later gave Isabella to
Spain, also bestowed upon France this wise,
intrepid woman at a critical time.
With a boy of eleven and a woman of thirty-
eight years upon the throne, the time seemed
propitious for the barons to recover the power
7o A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Philip had wrung from them, and to reduce
kingship to its former humble position.
With this purpose a powerful coalition was
formed, embracing the barons north and south,
chief among" whom was Raymond of Toulouse.
By force of arms, and by diplomacy, Blanche
of Castile met this crisis with astonishing cour-
age and address. The free cities sprang to her
assistance; and not only was the coalition
broken, but there was formed a bond between
the crown and the people, leaving the throne
stronger than before.
Blanche showed great political wisdom in
arranging for the marriage of her son with the
daughter of the Count of Provence; thus cap-
turing and securing the loyalty of this most
powerful and disaffected state, which was
making common cause with Toulouse against
the king. And it is with mingled pity and re-
joicing" that we hear of Raymond VII. of Tou-
louse, once champion of the Albigenses war-
rior, poet, troubadour, and heretic scourge in
hand and barefooted, at the porch of Notre
Dame, doing penance for his sins against the
Church.
With Louis IX. on the throne a new day had
A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE. 71
dawned for France. Louis was not a great
soldier. His reign was not one of territorial
expansion but of wise administration, giving
permanence and solidity to what already ex-
isted. We are apt to think of Philip's heavenly
minded grandson chiefly as a saint But his
service to the state was enduring- and of the
first magnitude, because it dealt with the
sources of things. When he established a
King's Court, which was a court of appeal
from the rude justice, or injustice, of feudal
counts, he undermined the foundation of feu-
dal power. In bestowing the right of appeal,
his protecting hand reached down to the poor-
est man in the realm. And when bewildered
barons heard the uncomprehended language of
the law-courts, and heard men not of their own
order declaring private wars punishable by
death, they felt their power slipping from under
them, and that they were coming into a new
sort of a world.
One of the greatest acts of this reign was the
abolishing of the double allegiance, which had
wrought such trouble since the Duke of Nor-
mandy's conquest of England. Feudal pro-
prietors were forbidden to hold territory under
72 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
a foreign king; and henceforth no conquered
province could acknowledge allegiance to an
English king ; nor would an English king again
be vassal to a king of France.
But in so fortifying his throne, this best of
kings, and of men, would have been surprised
had he been told that he was preparing the way
for the greatest tragedy in history ; that he was
creating an absolute despotism which five hun-
dred years later would require a revolution of
unprecedented horror for its removal. Such
was the fact. Every wise act in this reign was
prompted by the spirit of fairness and justice.
And if at the same time these acts were draw-
ing all the forces in the state to a central point,
under the control of a single hand, it was the
best development for France under existing
conditions.
Saint though he was, and almost fanatic in
his devotion to the Church, Louis resisted the
pope or the bishop, if unjust, with as much
energy as one of his own barons; and, in the
same spirit of fairness, would punish his own
too zealous defenders who had infringed upon
the feudal rights of the peerage.
This was Louis the king. But it is Louis
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 73
the saint who holds the eye on the world's
canvas. The real life was to him the life of
the soul. Francis Assisi himself did not live
in an atmosphere of greater spiritual exalta-
tion than this devout and heavenly grandson of
Philip Augustus ! No monk in the Dark Ages
attached such sanctity to relics. When a por-
tion of the crown of thorns was sent to him
from Jerusalem, he built that exquisite Saint e
Chapelle for its reception ; and barefooted, bare-
headed, carried it himself in solemn procession
from Vincennes to Paris, placing it with rev-
erent hands in that shrine we may visit to-day.
Christian knighthood had reached its one
perfect flower in Louis; and the Crusades fit-
tingly closed with the life of the most saintly
crusader. His first Crusade was disastrous,
occupying years of his life; his mother,
Blanche of Castile, dying during his absence.
His second and last was more costly still. Near
the ruins of Carthage, where he was in conflict
with a Mohometan band, he was stricken with
fever and died (1270).
Louis's brother, Charles of Anjou, is said
to have led him into this fatal attempt, for his
own purposes. Charles, of very different
74 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
memory, was at this time, by invitation of the
pope, occupying the double throne of Naples
and Sicily. And he it was who provoked by
his cruelties that frightful outbreak known as
the " Sicilian Vespers," in 1283,
^ The Crusades had lasted from 1095 to 1270.
The purpose for which they were undertaken
had signally failed. Jerusalem, captured in
the first Crusade., was lost in the second, and
never recovered. And so ineffectual had been
the expenditure of life, fortune, and enthusiasm
that the last Crusade was not even fought in
Palestine, but on the shores of North Africa.
But something had been accomplished which
none had foreseen : a result of greater magni-
tude than territorial possession of the Holy
Land. Through the broadening of men's
views, and the common heritage of a great
experience, a group of isolated kingdoms had
been draw r ii into fraternal relations, and a
European civilization had commenced.
There had been many surprises. Close con-
tact had softened prejudices. The infidel had
found that the crusader was something rnone
than the most brutal and stupid of barbarians,
as he had supposed ; and the crusader, that tbe
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 75
profaning infidel was not the monster he ex-
pected to find. In fact, the European discov-
ered that in the Saracen and the Greek they
met a civilization much more advanced, more
learned, and more polished than their own.
More civilization was brought out of the East
than was carried into it by its Christian in-
vaders. And it was through this strange and
disastrous experience that the art and the
thought of Europe received its first impulse
toward a great future.
* During the fifteen years of the reign of
Louis's son, Philip III., France moved on under
the momentum received from his father. But
the succeeding reign of Philip IV. was epoch-
making. That imperious, strong-willed son of
Saint Louis demanded that the clergy should
share the state's burden by contributing to its
revenue. Pope Boniface VIII., imperious and
strong-willed as he, immediately issued a bull,
forbidding the clergy to pay, or the officers to
receive, such taxes. The answ r er to this was a
royal edict forbidding the exportation of pre-
cious metals (of course including money) from
France to Italy, thus cutting off from the
pope the large revenue from the Church in
France.
76 A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE.
The quarrel resolved itself at last into a ques-
tion of the relative authority of king and pope
in the kingdom. In order to fortify his posi-
tion, and perhaps to show his contempt for
clergy and barons alike, Philip took a step
which profoundly affected the future of France.
At a great council summoned to consider these
papal claims, he commanded the presence not
only of the ecclesiastics and nobles, the two
governing estates, but also summoned the rep-
resentatives of the towns and cities the Tiers
Etatl Prelate, baron, and bourgeois for the
first time met in a Council of State.
A king who was the impersonation of abso-
lutism had created the States-General (1302) ;
had forged the instrument which would event-
ually effect for France a deliverance from mon-
archy itself!
The cause of the king was sustained by the
council; the claims of the pope were rejected
Still not satisfied, Philip then audaciously pro-
posed a general ecclesiastical council to deter-
mine whether Boniface legitimately wore the
triple crown. When the old man died, as is
said from the shock of this attempt, the king
was master of the situation. Gifts had already
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 77
been distributed among corrupt cardinals in the
conclave. The papacy was at his feet, and
might be in his hand. The most dissolute of
his own archbishops was selected as his tool,
and, as Clement V., succeeded to the chair of
St. Peter. The centre of the ecclesiastical world
was then removed from Rome to Avignon,
where it could be under Philip's immediate
direction, and the astonishing period in the his-
tory of the papacy, known as the Babylonian
Captivity, which was to last for seventy years,
under seven popes, had commenced.
The Knights Templar, those appointed guar-
dians of the Holy Sepulchre and defenders of
Jerusalem, it is to be supposed were not in sym-
pathy with these things. Whatever the cause,
their extermination was decreed. Accused of
impossible crimes, the whole brotherhood was
arrested in one day, and, at a summary trial,
condemned, Philip himself, in that old palace
on the island in the Seine, giving orders for the
fagots to be laid, and the immediate execution
of the grand master and many others.
Philip's death, occurring as it did soon after
this sacrilege, was popularly believed to be a
manifestation of God's wrath ; and the death of
78 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
his three sons, Louis, Philip, and Charles, who
successively reigned during a period of only
fourteen years, leaving the family extinct,
seemed a further proof that a curse rested upon
the house.
The question of the succession, for the first
time since Hugh Capet, was in doubt. By
the existing Salic Law only male descendants
were eligible to the throne of France. The
three sons of Philip IV. had died, leaving each
a daughter, so the son of Charles of Valois,
only brother of Philip IV. ? was the nearest in
descent from Hugh Capet ; and thus the crown
passed to the Valois branch of the family in the
person of Philip VI. (1328).
CHAPTER IX.
IN this break in the line of succession, Eng-
land saw an opportunity. The mother of Ed-
ward III., King" of England, was Isabella,
daughter of Philip IV. Edward claimed that
he, as grandson of the French king, had a
claim superior to that of the nephew. A strict
interpretation of the Salic Law certainly vi-
tiated his claim of heirship through the female
line. But Edward did not stand upon such a
trifle as that. The stake was great, and so was
the opportunity. Now England might not
alone recover her lost possessions in France,
but might establish a legitimate claim to the
whole.
So it was that an English army was once
more upon French soil, and in 1346 Edward,
with his toy cannon, had w r on the battle of
Crecy, followed by the siege and capture of
Calais, which for two hundred years was to re-
79
So A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
main an English port a thorn in the side of
France.
A part of the old kingdom of Burgundy,
which was called Dauphiny, dropped into the
lap of Philip, this first Valois king, during his
reign. The old duke, being without an heir,
offered to sell this bit of territory to the King of
France upon the condition that it should be kept
as the personal possession of the eldest sons of
the kings of France. Thenceforth the title of
Dauphin was w r om by the heir to the throne,
until it became extinct with the son of Louis
XVI. And when the feeble Philip VI. died in
1350, his son John, the first dauphin, assumed
the crown of France.
John, this second Valois king, was an anach-
ronism. A man intended for the eleventh cen-
tury had been set down in the fourteenth. The
restoration of knightly ceremonial, tournaments
at the Louvre, the details of a new Crusade
which he was planning, and the distribution of
new titles, these were the things occupying the
mind of the king, while his kingdom, rent by
factions within, was in a death-struggle with
foes from without.
A fantastic Don Quixote, on a tottering
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. Si
throne, was fighting the most practical states-
man and the strongest-armed warrior Europe
held at the time.
With this weakness at the centre, France was
again falling into fragments. There was even
a resumption of private wars between nobles ;
and, most paralyzing of all, an empty treasury.
Such time as he could spare from his main
projects John gave to the affairs of the king-
dorn. First of all, taxes must be levied; and
when the first tax was upon salt, King Edward
condescended to make an historic witticism,
saying " he had at last discovered who was the
author of the Salic Law! "
In the various plans for raising money, it
was important that the taxes should be levied
so that the burden would fall upon those who
could, and who would, pay. This meant the
dwellers in the towns and cities: the bour-
geoisie. They were the capitalists. But what
if they should refuse? In order to secure the
success of the measure, it was considered wise
to obtain their consent in advance.
When King John asked permission of the
States-General to tax them, a critical line was
passed. That body for the first time realized
82 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Its power. It might make its own terms. It
demanded that the moneys collected, and their
expenditure, should be under the direction of
its officers. Then, growing bolder, it demanded
reforms : Private wars must cease ; the meet-ings
of the States-General must be at appointed in-
tervals, without being summoned by the king.
These meetings at Paris grew stormy. Grad-
ually re-enforced with a vicious element, they
were soon led by demagogues, became violent
and revolutionary, and finally red caps and bar-
ricades, characteristic of Parisian mobs of a
later period, brought the whole movement into
the hands of the agents of " Charles the Bad/'
evil genius of his time, who saw his "opportu-
nity to use it in his own ambitious designs upon
the throne. But France was to hear from the
Tiers Etat again !
In 1356, Edward's son, the Black Prince,
won a still greater victory than Crecy, at
Poitiers, in which king John was captured and
carried to London.
But Edward found that, while victories were
comparatively easy, conquest was difficult. A
generation had passed since the war began.
So in 1360 both kingdoms were ready to con-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 83
sider terms of peace. By the treaty of Bre-
tigny, Edward renounced the claim to the
French throne, and received in full sovereign-
ty the great inheritance Queen Eleanor had
brought to Henry II. King John was to be
released and his son held as hostage until
the enormous ransom was paid. Of course
the money could not be paid by impoverished
France, for such a doubtful benefit, at least ; and
so the son and hostage made his escape. Then
King John, faithful to his chivalrous creed, re-
turned to London and captivity, dying in 1364.
The dauphin, who had now become Charles
V., came to the throne with the determination
of restoring France to herself. His attention
had been drawn to the military talents of a
Breton youth Bertrand du Guesclin. Poor,
diminutive in stature, deformed, he had raised
himself to military positions usually reserved as
a reward for sons of nobles. In the reopening
of a war with England, which Charles was
planning, du Guesclin was to be the sword and
he the brain.
The Black Prince had gone to Spain to fight
the battles of Peter the Cruel, in a civil w r ar in
which the Prince was involved by inheritance,
84 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
and was levying taxes for this Castilian war
upon his new subjects in Aquitaine. The peo-
ple in this province turned to Charles to deliver
them from this oppression. He immediately
summoned Prince Edward before the Court of
Peers; to which the Black Prince replied that
he would accept the invitation, but would come
with his helmet on his head and sixty thousand
men in his party.
So successfully did Charles and du Guesclin
meet this renewal of the war that Prince Ed-
ward and his sixty thousand men w r ere gradu-
ally driven north until the English possessions
were reduced to a few towns upon the coast.
The Black Prince, under the weight of respon-
sibility and defeat, succumbed to disease, and
died, 1377. The death of Edward III. oc-
curred soon after that of his son, and Richard
II. was King of England.
The expulsion of the English was not the
only benefit bestowed by Charles V. The
revolting States-General were restrained and
were firmly held in the king's hand. Still
more important was the reorganization of the
military system, by placing it under the com-
mand of officers appointed by the Crown, who
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 85
might or might not belong to the order of no-
bility. No more effective blow could have
been aimed at feudalism, which was nothing if
not militant. Indeed, every act of this brief
reign was a protest against the purposes and
ideals of his father, King John, who was the
embodiment of the ancient spirit. It was a
needed breathing-spell between a half-century
of disaster behind and another half-century of
still greater disaster before.
The death of Charles V. (1380) left the
throne to a delicate boy of twelve years, who
was to reign under the successive regencies of
three uncles. These brothers of Charles, and
sons of the romantic King John, seem to rep-
resent all the traits and passions which can de-
grade humanity. The oldest, the Duke of
An j ou, was driven from the regency after steal-
Ing everything which was movable In the king r s
palace and vaults. The Duke of Burgundy,
who succeeded him, had nobler objects, and
needed a larger field for his ambitious soul.
He had an eye on the throne Itself. And when
he and the Duke Berri, at the instigation of
the archbishop, were compelled to resign the
reins to the young King Charles VI., they car-
86 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCS.
ried with them to their own castles all that
Anjou had left. Of course the archbishop was
mysteriously murdered, and then the boy king
was married to Isabella of Bavaria, said to be
the most beautiful and the wickedest woman in
Europe.
Charles had always been a frail, delicate boy.
As he was riding one evening, a strange, wild-
looking being sprang out of the darkness and
seized the bridle of his horse, crying, " Fly,
fly ! you are betrayed." The astonished youth
after the shock, became melancholy; then \vas
suddenly seized with a fit of frenzy, in which
he killed four of his pages. A mad king was
on the throne of France, the worst woman in
Europe regent, and three uncles waiting like
vultures around a dying man, ready to seize
anything from a golden candlestick to a throne !
In the chaos of misrule and villainy into
which France was falling, the determining fac-
tor was the deadly feud which existed between
the house of Burgundy and that of Orleans.
Upon the death of the first Duke of Burgundy,
his son John seized the regency for himself,
snatching it from the Duke of Orleans, the
king's brother. At this point started the feud
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 87
was to tear France asunder from end
to end. While the Orleanists were gathering
their adherents to drive him out, John was in-
trenching- himself in Paris. Like many another
villain, this Duke of Burgundy posed as the
friend of the people. He could doff his cap
and speak smilingly to starving men. He
knew how to work upon their passions, and to
please by torturing and executing those they
believed had wronged them. He told them
how he pitied them for the extortions of the
Duke of Orleans and Queen Isabella, kindly
giving them pikes to defend themselves, and
iron chains to barricade their streets, if they
should be needed. Then, extending his hand
to his enemy of Orleans, brother of the king,
they were reconciled : the past was to be buried.
Then it is a pleasant picture we behold of the
period : the two friends partaking together o"
communion, and dining, and then embracing at
parting with effusive words and promises to
meet at a dance on the morrow, the unsuspect-
ing Duke of Orleans going out into the dark,
where hired assassins were waiting to hack him
in pieces. Then a court of justice trying- and
acquitting this confessed murderer of the
88 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
king's brother, upon the ground that tyranni-
cide is a duty; the sad, crazed wraith of a king
saying the words he had been taught : " Fair
cousin, we pardon you all." And the tragedy
and comedy were over !
There was no\v no check upon the Burgun-
dian power. In the worst days of English oc-
cupation of her land, France had been in less
danger from Edward III. than she now was
from the Duke of Burgundy, champion and de-
fender of the people ! The immediate object of
the Burgundian or people's party, and the Or-
leans and aristocratic party, was the possession
of the person of the king, and control of his
acts during his few lucid moments.
There was civil war in a land divested of
every vestige of government. England would
have been blind had she not seen her oppor-
tunity; but, too much occupied w r ith her own
revolution, she had to wait. And when Henry
IV., the first Lancastrian, was king, he needed
both hands to hold his crown firmly on his head.
But when the young Henry V. came to the
throne, with the energy and ambition of youth,
the time was ripe for the recovery of the lost
possessions in France-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 89
The battle of Agincourt (1415) reopened the
war with a great defeat for the French chivalry,
which represented the Orleanist party. The
wholesale slaughter of princes, bishops, and
knights on this fatal day was clear gain for the
traitor Burgundy, the champion of the people !
The climax of his villainy was at hand.
Henry V., at Rouen, was openly holding his
court as King of France. John, Duke of Bur-
gundy, accompanied by Queen Isabella, pre-
sented himself to the invading king, and for-
mally pledged his support and that of his
followers to the cause of the English !
The infamous treaty of Troves was signed,
1420. It provided that Henry should act as
regent to Charles VI. while he lived; that
upon the death of that unhappy being he should
be Henry V. of England and Henry II. of
France; and that the two kingdoms should
thereafter exist under one crown. The roman-
tic marriage of Henry with the Princess Kath-
arine, daughter of Charles and Isabella, which
was part of the agreement, was solemnized
in that old palace on the island in the Seine.
And the same vaulted ceilings which we may
see to-day, looked down upon this historic mar-
90 .4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
riage, as they also did upon the condemnation
of Marie Antoinette, three and a half centuries
later. We know of this union of Henry and
the fair Katharine chiefly through the pen of
Shakespeare, in his play of Henry V.
But Henry was destined never to wear the
crown of France, nor even to see his own land
again. There were only two more years of
life for him. His death occurred in his pal-
ace of the Louvre, a few weeks before that of
Charles VL, and the crown he expected to wear
upon this event passed to his infant son, who
was by the Burgundian party recognized as
King of France.
A careless, pleasure-loving dauphin, just
twenty, apparently indifferent to the loss of a
kingdom, was a frail support at such a time.
Only a fragment of the country was held by
his followers, the Orleanists; Scotland had
come to his aid with a few thousand men, but
what did this avail with the greater part of the
kingdom held by the Burgundians, while town
after town was declaring its allegiance to the
English Duke of Bedford, whom his dying
brother, Henry V., had named as regent for his
infant son.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 91
The city of Orleans, held by the dauphin's
adherents, was besieged. It was the key to the
situation. Its fall meant the fall of the king-
dom, the conquest of France. When this hap-
pened, that infant at the Louvre would really
be the wearer of the crown. So hopeless was
the situation that the spiritless Charles was
only in doubt whether to take refuge in Scot-
land or in Spain.
But although towns and cities had deserted
him, the heart of the people had not. Patriot-
ism, dead everywhere else, still lived in the heart
of that forgotten multitude lying silent and
humble tinder the feet of its masters. The
monarchy had been their friend, their only
friend. The Church had deserted them, and
joined their enemies the nobles. But to the
people, the name King expressed gratitude and
hope ; and they loved it.
If a great spreading tree full of verdure had
arisen in a day out of the barren breast of
Mother Earth, it would scarcely have been a
greater miracle that what really happened
when a child of the soil, a girl, rising trium-
phant over the disabilities of age, sex, birth,
and condition, saved France from destruction.
92 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Summoned by celestial voices, by angels whom
she not only heard but saw, Joan of Arc started
upon her mission of rescue for France !
When this daughter of the people, this peas-
ant from Domremy, was admitted to the pres-
ence of the dauphin, it is said that in amuse-
ment and in order to test the reality of her
mission, Charles exchanged dress with one of
his courtiers. But the maid going straight to
him, said : " Gentle dauphin, I come to restore
to you the crown of France. Orleans shall be
saved by me. And you, by the help of God
and my Lady St. Catharine, shall be crowned at
Rheims."
On the 2Qth of April the maid did enter the
fainting city. And she did lead the dauphin
to Rheims for his coronation. And then,
kneeling at his feet, asked the " Gentle King "
to let her go back to her sheep at Doniremy.
" For/' she said, " they love me more than
these thousands of people I have seen."
Unhappily, she did not return to her sheep,
but remained among those wolves, and was cap-
tured and a prisoner of the English.
What should they do with this strange being,
claiming supernatural powers? The Regent
From the painting by Lenepveu.
Burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen, May SO, ]431.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 93
Duke of Bedford denounced her as a rebel
against the infant king; and the Bishop of
Beauvais as a blasphemer and child of the
devil. Nothing could be clearer than her guilt
upon both of these charges ! And on the I3th
of May, 1431, this mysteriously inspired child
was burnt by a slow fire in the market-place of
Rouen. And the " Gentle King/' where was
he while this was happening?
It must ever remain a mystery that a peas-
ant girl, a child in years and in experience,
should have believed herself called to such a
mission ; that conferring only with her heavenly
guides, or " voices/' she should have sought the
king, inspired him with faith in her, and in
himself and his cause, reanimated the courage
of the army, and led it herself to victory abso-
lute and complete; and then, have compelled
the half-reluctant, half-doubting Charles to go
with her to Rheims, there to be anointed and
consecrated; this simple child in that day be-
stowing upon him a kingdom, and upon France
a king !
Was there ever a stranger chapter in history !
Alas, if it could have ended here, and she could
have gone back to her mother and her spinning
94. A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
and her simple pleasures, as she was always
longing to do when her work should be done.
But no! \ve see her falling into the hands of
the defeated and revengeful English this
child, who had wrested from them a kingdom
already in their grasp. She was turned over
to the French ecclesiastical court to be tried.
A sorceress and a blasphemer they pronounce
her, and pass her on to the secular authorities,
and her sentence is death.
We see the poor defenceless girl, bewildered,
terrified, wringing her hands and declaring her
innocence as she rides to execution. God and
man had abandoned her. No heavenly voice
spoke, no miracle intervened as her young limbs
were tied to the stake and the fagots and straw
piled up about her. The torch was applied, and
her pure soul mounted heavenward in a column
of flames.
Rugged men wept. A Burgundian general
said, as he turned gloomily away, " We have
murdered a saint."
And Charles, sitting upon the throne she had
rescued for him, what was he doing to save
her? Nothing to his everlasting shame be it
said, nothing. He might not have succeeded ;
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 95
the effort at rescue, or to stay the event, might
have been unavailing. But where was his
knighthood, where his manhood, that he did not
try, or utter passionate protest against her fate?
Twenty-five years later we see him erecting
statues to her memory, and " rehabilitating "
her desecrated name. And to-day, the Church
which condemned her for blasphemy is placing
her upon the calendar of saints.
CHAPTER X.
CHARLES VII. in creating a standing 1 army
struck feudalism a deadly blow. His son, Louis
XL, with cold-blooded brutality finished the
work. This man's powerful and crafty intelli-
gence saw in an alliance with the common peo-
ple a means of absorbing to himself supreme
power. Not since Tiberius had there been a
more blood-thirsty monster on a throne. But
he demolished the political structure of mediae-
valism in his kingdom ; and when his cruel reign
was ended the Middle Ages had passed away,
and modern life had begun in France.
There was no longer even the pretence of
knightly virtues in France. It was time for
the high-born robbers and ruffians in steel hel-
mets to give place to men with hearts and
brains. It is said that of those thousands, that
chivalric host, which was slaughtered at Agin-
court, not one in twenty could write his name.
All alike were cruel and had the instincts of
96
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 97
barbarians. While the Duke of Burgundy, the
richest prince in Europe, was starving his ene-
mies in secret dungeons in the Bastille, his
Orleans rival, Count of Armagnac, not having
access to the Bastille, was decapitating Burgun-
dians till his executioners fainted from fatigue.
It is almost with relief that we read of tbe
slaughter of these knightly savages at Agin-
court. If the shipwreck of a mighty kingdom
was to be averted, two things must be done.
The decaying corpse of feudalism must be
thrown overboard, and the Church must be
purified. Both had fallen from the ideals
which created them; the ideal of truth, justice,
and spotless honor, and the ideal of divine love
and mercy. Even the semblance of truth and
justice and honor had departed from the one;
and unspeakable corruption had crept into the
other. From the day of the Albigensian cruel-
ties, the heart of the Church had turned to stone,
and the spark of life divine within seemed ex-
tinguished. Once the guardian of the helpless,
it had deserted the people and made common
cause with their oppressors. One pope at
Rome, and another at Avignon, was a heavy
burden to carry. But when three infallible
.9& A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
beings were hurling anathemas at each other,
the University of Paris led Christendom in
rejecting them all
So the two great classes for which the State
existed were overweighting the ship at a time
when it was being torn and tossed by a storm
of gigantic proportions.
Well was it for France that Charles VII., as
king, developed unexpected firmness and abil-
ity. The creation of a standing army, and the
disbanding of all military organizations exist-
ing without the king's commission, at one
sweeping blow completed the wreck of feudal-
ism. It only remained for Charles's cold-
blooded son, Louis XI., to finish the work, and
medievalism was a thing of the past in France.
The reign of Charles was imbittered by the
conduct of this unnatural son, whose undis-
guised impatience to assume the crown so
alarmed him that it is said he shortened his own
life by abstaining from food in the fear that
the dauphin might lay the guilt of parricide
upon his soul.
This heart-broken, desolate old man died in
1461. And Louis XL was King of France.
The son of Charles VII. was a composite of
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 99
the wisest and the worst of his predecessors.
Indeed, it is to the Roman emperors we must
look for a parallel to this monster on a throne.
And yet, to no other king does France owe
such a debt of gratitude. His remorseless
hand placed a great gulf between the new and
the old, in which were forever buried the men
and the system which had fed upon her life.
The antagonism between the son and the
father aroused great hopes of a reversal of
policy and a rehabilitation of feudalism. These
hopes were soon undeceived. So inscrutable
and so tortuous was the policy of this strange
being, so unexpected his changes of direction,
so false and inconsistent his words and acts,
and so unspeakably cruel the means to his ends,
that a cowed and bewildered nation was soon
crouching at his feet, not knowing whither he
was leading them.
Warfare played no part in this reign. In-
vasion was met by diplomacy, and slaughter
and bloodshed were relegated to the execu-
tioner. Incredible as it seems, it is said that
from his windows this king could look out
upon an avenue of gibbets upon which hung the
bodies of his enemies. The humorous spirit in
ico A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
which he disposed of obstructive nobles is illus-
trated by a note to an unsuspecting victim.
" Fair cousin, come and give us your advice.
We have need of so wise a head as yours."
And in the morning the fair cousin's wise head
was in a basket filled with sawdust !
When all was done, a town council meant
more than the " Order of the Golden Fleece " ;
and, pari passu, with the humiliation of the
noble came the elevation of the bourgeois. A
nameless adventurer would be admitted to con-
fidential intimacy when a Montmorenci could
not get beyond his antechamber.
In fact, this levelling up and levelling down
was the object of all this king's odious crimes
and the central purpose of his cold-blooded
reign. If a patent of nobility was a pretty
good passport to the scaffold, good service in a
town council was an open door to elevation.
So, judged by results, Louis XI. was a better
king than many a better man had been. He
buried the ideals of the past fathoms deep and
then stamped them down with remorseless feet.
He demolished the political structure of medie-
valism in his kingdom, and when his terrible
reign was ended, in 1483, the Middle Ages had
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. IOI
passed away and modern life had begun in
France.
Almost any reign would have seemed color-
less after that of Louis XL But that of his
son, Charles VIII.., was made memorable by one
event, an invasion of Italy, which brought to
France a long train of disastrous consequences.
It will be remembered that in the thirteenth
century, Charles, Duke of Anjou, of Sicilian
fame, or infamy, and brother of Louis the
Saint, occupied the throne of Naples by invita-
tion of the pope.
The family of Anjou having recently become
extinct, Charles was now the rightful heir to
that throne. So as there was nothing in espe-
cial for him to do at home, and as his new army,
created and equipped by his father, w r as a very
splendid affair for that day, and as Charles w r as
young and ambitious of a name, he determined
to take forcible possession of his inheritance in
Italy.
The success of the enterprise was quite daz-
zling. Milan, Florence, Rome, were success-
ively occupied, and finally Charles was actually
seated upon the throne in Naples (1495).
But the seat was not comfortable. The
102 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Neapolitans did not want him ; and, what was
more important, Spain, England, and Austria
talked of uniting to drive him out. And so
he and his army returned to France, and all
that had been gained by the enterprise was a
wide-open door between France and Italy at
the very time when it might better have been
kept closed, and the discovery by Europe that
the Italian peninsula was an easy prey to any
ambitious European power. What Charles had
done might also, and more effectually, be done
by England, Spain, or Austria. All of which
bore bitter fruit in the next century.
But for France the fruit was of a more
deadly kind. The princely and noble blood of
Italy began to be mingled with hers, bringing
a vicious and corrupt strain at a critical period.
Old as she was in centuries, France was but
a child in civilization. An uncouth, untutored
child, just emerging from barbarism, was sud-
denly brought under the influence of a fasci-
nating, highly developed civilization, old in
wickedness. A nation in which the ruling class
had only recently learned to read and write was
naturally dazzled by this sister nation, satu-
rated with the learning and culture of the ages,
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 103
mistress of every brilliant art and accomplish-
ment; who after having run the whole gamut
of human experience, drunk at every known
fountain, had arrived at the code summed up
by Machiavelli as the best by which to live!
It was an easy task for the Medici to control
the policy, as they did for generations, of such
simple barbarians.
Italy presents a strange spectacle in this clos-
ing fifteenth century: All the concentrated
splendor from the fall of Byzantium hanging
over her like a luminous cloud before dispersing
as the Renaissance; Lorenzo de' Medici, at
Florence, directing the intellectual currents of
Europe; Angelo and Raphael creating the
world's sublimest masterpieces in art ; her great
Genoese son uncovering another hemisphere;
Savonarola, like an inspired prophet of old,
calling upon men to " repent, repent, while
there is yet time " ; Machiavelli instructing the
nations of the earth.in villainy as a fine art ; and
Alexander VI., the basest man in Europe, poi-
soner, father of every crime, claiming to be
Vicegerent of Christ upon earth !
But the currents were moving swiftly toward
a crisis which was to change all this. One
i04 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
more pope, that magnificent patron of art,
Julius II., creator of the Vatican Museum,
with the recently found Apollo Belvedere, and
the Laocoon as a splendid nucleus, and pro-
jector and builder of St. Peter's. And then Leo
X. (Medicean Pope) and Luther!
The year 1492 contained three important
events : the discovery of a new world, the ex-
pulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the death
of Lorenzo de ? Medici. Spain's crusade of
seven hundred years was over. We must
search in vain for any struggle to match this
in singleness and persistence of purpose. Com-
mencing one hundred years before Charle-
magne created a Holy Roman Empire, it
ended triumphantly under a king and queen
who were to play a leading part in the
Reformation.
The stage was making ready, and the char-
acters were assembling for the great modern
drama, in a century even more significant than
the one then closing.
The reign of Charles VIII. ended in 1498.
And as he left no son, the succession once more
passed to a collateral branch : Louis XII., of the
House of Orleans, wore the crown of France.
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 105
i It Is interesting to recall that these two kings,
Charles and Louis, were respectively grandsons
of those two ambitions dukes whose personal
feud brought France to the verge of ruin a few
decades earlier : Louis XII. being the descend-
ant of that Duke of Orleans, brother of Charles
VI., the reigning king, who was murdered in
the streets of Paris; w^hile Charles VIII. was
the descendant of his slayer, the terrible Duke
of Burgundy, evil genius of France at that
time.
The principal event in the reign of the new
king Avas the reopening of the Italian War by
the combined and successful action of Spain
and France. But this proved a barren triumph
for Louis, who, when all was done, found that
he had been simply aiding that artful diplo-
matist, Ferdinand, in securing the whole prize
for Spain, The disagreement growing out of
the distribution of the spoil resulted in a war
between the late allies; and it was in this
wretched conflict that Bayard, chevalier sans
peur et sans reprochc, was sacrificed.
Louis died in 1515, also without an heir; and
so the crown passed to still another collateral
branch of the main Capetian line. The Count
106 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
of Angouleme, cousin of the dead king, was
proclaimed Francis I.
The fall of Constantinople in the East, and
the discovery of a new world in the West, were
changing the whole aspect of Europe. The art
of printing, coming almost simultaneously with
these transforming events, sent vitalizing cur-
rents reaching even to the humblest. France
partook of the general awakening and was
throwing off the torpor of centuries. New
ambitions were aroused, and her slumbering
genius began to be stirred. This was a pro-
pitious moment for an ambitious young king
who aimed not only at being the greatest of
military heroes, but also the splendid patron of
art and letters, and wisest of men! The role
he had set for himself being, in fact, a Charle-
magne and a Lorenzo de' Medici in one. All
that was needed for success in this large field
was ability. Personal valor -Francis certainly
possessed. His reign opened brilliantly with a
campaign in the Italian peninsula, which left
him after the battle of Marignano, master of
the Milanese and of northern Italy. He need
not trouble himself as had his predecessors
about recalcitrant and scheming nobles. They
A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE. 107
had never been heard from since Louis XL took
them in hand. Neither were the States-Gen-
eral going to annoy him by assertion of rights
and demands for reforms. They too had
become almost non-existent; it having been
well established that only the direst emergency
would ever call them into being again. So
kingship held sole and undisputed sway, and
Francis was looking about to see where he
might make it even stronger.
The residence of the popes, at Avignon, dur-
ing the period of the Great Schism, had led to
the establishment by Charles VII. of an ordi-
nance called the Pragmatic Sanction; its object
being the limitation of the papal power in
France. The pope by this ordinance was cut
off from certain lucrative sources of income;
to offset which the king was deprived of the
right of appointing officers for vacant bishop-
rics and abbeys.
Francis I. and Leo X. came together, and,
after conferring, determined that the Pragmatic
Sanction should be repudiated; Leo, because
he must increase his revenues, and Francis,
because he desired to use appointments to rich
vacancies as rewards for his friends. Leo's
108 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
tastes, as we know, were magnificent, and
needed much more money than he could com-
mand; a fact which led to grave results, and
changed the course of events in the world !
In 1516 Ferdinand L, King of Spain, died,
leaving his enormous possessions to his grand-
son, Charles, a youth not yet twenty. The
mother of this boy was Joanna, the insane
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who was
married to the son and heir of Maxmilian L,
Emperor of Germany.
The young Charles, by the death of his
father, had already inherited the Netherlands
and Flanders ; to which by the death of his ma-
ternal grandfather there was now added Spain,
the kingdom of Naples, Mexico, and Peru. A
heavy enough burden, one would think, for
young shoulders. But it was to become still
heavier. In 1519 his other grandfather, Maxi-
milian I., died, leaving the throne of the empire
vacant.
This office by ancient custom, established by
Charlemagne, was elective, and theoretically
was open to any prince in Europe. But with
the seven princes known as electors, with whom
rested choice of the successor, hereditary claim
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 109
had great weight. Europe saw with dismay
the imminent creation of an empire greater
than that of Charlemagne an empire which
would cover a large part of the map of Europe
and of America. For none was this so alarm-
Ing as for France, which would in fact be en-
veloped upon almost every side by this giant
among the nations. A French king would
indeed have been dull and spiritless not to real-
ize the magnitude of the danger, and Francis
was neither. There was only a youth of nine-
teen standing between him and the greatest dig-
nity in Europe. It was not alone an oppor-
tunity to save France from this overshadowing
power, but to reunite the crowns of France and
the empire as originally designed by Charle-
magne. No role could have better pleased
Francis I. He announced himself a claimant
for the vacant throne (under the clause opening
it to European princes), claiming that his own-
ership of the adjacent territory of Northern
Italy made him the natural successor to the
Imperial throne.
Then another ambitious young king ap-
peared as another rival claimant, Henry VIII.
of England, with his astute Minister Woolsey
no A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
to fight the diplomatic battles for his master.
It was a brilliant game, played by great players
for a great stake: Francis lavishly bribing
and dazzling by theatrical displays of splendor ;
Henry arrogant, ostentatious, vain, and Charles
silent, inscrutable, cold-blooded, and false,
whispering to Woolsey that he might make him
pope at the next election. From that moment
the powerful influence of the Cardinal was used
for this sedate youth, this wise youth, who saw
that the fitting place for him (Woolsey) was
the chair of St. Peter!
The diplomacy of the boy of nineteen won
the prize. The electors gave the crown to
Charles V. Leo X. died soon after. Woolsey
waited in hourly expectation of the summons to
Rome. But it never came !
Then Francis resolved to win by force what
he had lost by diplomacy. Charles succeeded
in winning the pope to his side of the contest
w r ith the purpose of driving the French out of
Italy. The attempt quickly ended in the de-
feat of the French, and for Francis capture,
and a year's imprisonment in Madrid; his re-
lease only obtained by abandoning all claims
upon Italy; and in 1547 the showy and ineffec-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. Ill
tual reign of Francis I. was terminated by his
death, which occurred almost immediately after
that of Henry VIII. in England.
While these events were taking place, a less
conspicuous but vastly more significant conflict
had developed. In 1517, -Martin Luther, the
obscure monk, had hurled defiance at the Church
of Rome, arraigning Leo X. for corrupt prac-
tices; especially the enrichment of the Church
by the sale of indulgences. Germany was
shaken to its centre by Protestantism, and the
reign of Charles V. was to be spent in ineffect-
ual conflict with the Reformation, which would
ultimately tear the Empire asunder.
The new heresy had found congenial soil in
France. England was openly and avowedly
Protestant, while Spain and Italy remained un-
changeably Catholic.
For Francis, destined to spend his life in
fruitless contest with the more able, wily, and
astute Charles V., the religious question upon
which Europe was divided meant nothing ex-
cept at he could use it in his duel with the em-
peror. He was in turn the ally of Henry VIII.
or the willing tool of Charles V. If he needed
the English king's friendship, the Protestants
112 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
had protection. If he desired to placate Charles
V., the roastings and torturings commenced
again.
In 1547 Francis and Henry VIII. each went
to his reward, and a few years later Charles
V. had laid down his crown and carried his
weary, unsatisfied heart to St. Yuste. The
brilliant pageant was over; but Protestantism
was expanding.
CHAPTER XI.
THE conversion of Henry VIII., because the
pope refused to annul his marriage with Cath-
arine, aunt of Charles V., \vas not the proud-
est, but one of the most important triumphs of
the new faith. Had Catharine's charms been
fresher, or Anne Boleyn less alluring, the
course of history would have been changed.
Henry VIII., as persecutor of heretics, would
have found congenial occupation for his fero-
cious instincts, and the triumph of Protestant-
ism would have been long delayed. But no
such cause existed for the success of the Refor-
mation on French soil. The slumbering germs
of heresy, left perhaps by Abelard, or by the
heretics in Toulouse and Provence, were
quickly warmed into life. It may be also that
the memory of her desertion by the Church,
once her only friend and champion, gave such
intensity to the welcome of a " Reformation "
by the people. At all events, whatever the ex-
planation, a religious war was at hand which
"3
114 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
was going to stain the fair name of France
more even than the treacheries of her civil war.
The question at issue was deeper than any
one knew. Neither Luther nor Leo X. under-
stood the revolution they had precipitated.
Protestants and Papists alike failed to compre-
hend the true nature of the struggle, which was
not for supremacy of Romanist or Protestant ;
not whether this dogma or that was true, and
should prevail; but an assertion of the right. of
every human soul to choose its own faith and
form of worship. The great battle for human
liberty had commenced ; the struggle for relig-
ious liberty was but the prelude to what was to
follow. There was abundant proof later that
Protestants no less than Papists needed only
opportunity and power to be as cruel and in-
tolerant as their persecutors had been. Before
the Reformation was fifty years old, Servetus,
one of the greatest men of his age, a scholar,
philosopher, and man of irreproachable char-
acter, was burned at Geneva for heretical views
concerning the nature of the Trinity; Calvin,
the great organizer of Protestant theology, giv-
ing, if not the order for this odious crime, at
least the nod of approval for its commission.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 115
France had known many tragedies. But
when Francis, in pursuance of his Italian policy,
secured the hand of Catharine de' Medici for
his son and heir, Henry II, he prepared the
way for the most tragic event in her history.
Powerless to win the affection, or even confi-
dence, of Henry while he lived, Catharine re-
mained unobserved; but, as the event proved,
not unobservant. Her astute mind had been
studying every current in the kingdom.
Tw r o families had come into prominence dur-
ing this reign which were to play leading parts
in the immediate future : the family of Guise, of
the house of Lorraine, represented by Francis,
Duke of Guise ; and that of Chatillon, of which
Admiral Coligny was the head, both of whom
Catharine hated and had marked for destruc-
tion.
Mary, of the house of Guise, was the wife
of James VI. of Scotland; and through the
powerful influence of the Guises, the brothers
of the Scottish queen, a marriage was arranged
between her daughter her most serene little
highness, Marie Stuart and the dauphin, who
would some day be Francis II.
In order to be prepared for this high des-
Il6 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
tiny, the little maid when only five years old
was brought to the Court of France to be
trained under the direct influence of the accom-
plished queen-mother, Catharine undoubtedly,
although unsuspected then, the worst woman in
Europe ! Poor little Marie Stuart, predestined
to sin and to tragedy ! What could be expected
of a woman with the blood of the Guises in her
veins, and with Catharine de' Medici as her
model and teacher ?
In 1559 Henry II. was killed by an accident
at a tournament. The marriage of the two
children had taken place. The sickly boy, with
only a modest portion of intelligence, was Fran-
cis II., King of France. Marie, his beautiful
and adored queen, controlled him utterly, and
was herself in turn controlled by her uncles of
the house of Guise. In fact, the family of
Guise, which was the head of the Catholic party
in the kingdom, ruled France, with the strange
result that if Catharine looked for any allies in
her fight with this ambitious family, she must
make common cause with the Protestants, led
by Admiral Coligny, whom she hated only a
little less than the uncles of Marie Stuart.
The princes of the house of Bourbon, a re-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 117
mote branch of the royal family, which, next
to Francis, were the nearest to the throne, had
been extremely jealous of the growing power of
the Guises. Now they saw them, as the ad-
visers of the young king, actually usurping the
position which was theirs by right of birth.
Two factions grew out of this feud in the
court, and there developed a Bourbon party,
and the party of the Guises ; one identified with
the Protestant and the other with the Catholic
cause.
Antony de Bourbon, the head of the family
of this name, whether from conviction or from
antagonism to the Guises, had openly espoused
the Protestant side. It was the rich burghers
of the towns, in combination with the smaller
nobles, which composed the Protestant party in
France. And although the impelling cause of
the great movement was religious, political
wrongs had become a powerful contributing
cause; as is always the case, the discontented
and aggrieved, for whatever reason, casting in
their lot with those who had a deeper grievance
and a more sacred purpose.
Whether the conversion of the Bourbon
prince was of that nature or not, who can say?
Tl8 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
But the movement swelled, and France was
divided into two hostile camps: one under
the Protestant banner of Antony de Bourbon,
father of Henry of Navarre, and the other
under that of the Catholic, Francis, Duke of
Guise ; and two children were on the throne of
France while the ground was trembling beneath
their feet with a coming revolution.
Francis I. had been too much occupied with
his own plans to take in hand systematically
and seriously the prevailing heresy. Henry
II. , son of Francis, had also temporized with
the religious revolt, probably not realizing the
powerful element it contained. Now, with the
Guises firmly in power, there would be no more
half-way measures.
But a crisis was at hand which would change
the whole situation. The discovery of a plot
to seize the person of the young king and place
a Bourbon prince upon the throne, led to a gen-
eral slaughter. Fresh relays of executioners
in Paris stood ready to relieve each other when
exhausted, and the Seine was black with the
bodies of the drowned.
During this preliminary storm the frail
young king, Francis II., suddenly died. Marie
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 119
Stuart passed out of French history, and the
power of the Guises was at an end. The
fates were certainly fighting on the side of
Catharine.
There are hints that the fine Italian hand
may be seen in this event which at one stroke
removed every obstacle from her path ! How-
ever this may be, Catharine wasted no re-
grets upon the death of a son which made her
queen regent during the minority of her sec-
ond son, Charles, now ten years of age (1560).
There was no time to lose. Her control over
the feeble Charles IX. before he reached his
majority must be absolute. Every impulse
toward mercy must be extinguished.
What can be said of a mother who seeks to
exterminate every germ of truth or virtue in
her son ; who immerses him in degrading vices
in order to deaden his too sensitive conscience
and make him a willing tool for her pur-
poses ? Inheriting the splendid intelligence as
well as genius for statecraft of the Medici,
nourished from her infancy upon Machiavel-
lian principles, cold and cruel by nature, this
Florentine woman has written her name in
blood across the pages of French history.
120 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
There were two main ends to be kept in
view: the destruction of the Guises, and the
extermination of the Huguenots, as the Protes-
tants were now called. These were difficult to
reconcile, but both must be accomplished.
Coligny, the splendid old admiral and Hu-
guenot, hero of the nation, he, too, must go.
And Henry of Navarre, the adored young
leader of the Huguenots, of course was high
on the list marked for destruction; but there
might be other uses for him before that time.
Never had the Huguenots received such gen-
tle treatment. Disabilities were removed and
privileges bestowed. Never was the beautiful
queen-mother as smiling, gracious, and witty.
A letter to her uncle, Pope Innocent III., writ-
ten, it is said, between a dinner and a mas-
querade, asked if men might not be good
enough Christians even if they did not believe
in transubstantiation, and useful subjects even
though they could not accept the Apostolic
succession !
Then this excellent woman declared her ad-
miration for the intelligence of the Huguenots,
whom until now she had believed were mere
fanatical enthusiasts. Then Henry of Na-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 121
varre, the brave, generous, accomplished Prot-
estant leader, was urgently invited to the court,
and finally even offered the hand of Mar-
garet of Valois, her daughter, as a compro-
mise which would heal the rivalry between
the two faiths.
And so, on the i8th of August, 1572, Notre
Dame, grim but splendid, looked down upon
the marriage of Margaret and Henry, in the
presence of all the leaders of Huguenot and
Catholic in France.
The Protestants wept for joy at the recon-
ciliation accomplished by this union. And all
were to remain and partake of the week of fes-
tivities which were to follow.
Then, the pageant over, a secret council was
held in Catharine's apartment in the Louvre, in
which her remaining son, Henry, participated,
but from which his brother the king was ex-
cluded; some wishing to include the Guises in
the approaching massacre, some urging that
Henry of Navarre be spared, but all agree-
ing that Coligny must go; it being, in fact,
the influence of this magnetic man over the
young king which was the danger-point com-
pelling haste and the uncertainty as to wiiat
122 .4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
her son might do endangered the success of
the whole plot.
Charles, who was now king, was impressible,
easily influenced, yet stubborn, intractable, in-
coherent, passionate, and unreliable; some-
times Inclining to the Guises, sometimes to
Coligny and the Huguenots, and always sub-
mitting at last, after vain struggle, to his im-
perious mother's will, in her efforts to free him
from both. We see in him a weak character,
not naturally bad. torn to distraction by the
cruel forces about him, who when compelled to
yield, as he always did in the end, to that ter-
rible woman, would give way to fits of impotent
rage against the fate which allowed him no
peace.
The time had arrived when Catharine feared
the influence of Coligny more than that of the
Guises. Brave, patriotic, magnetic, he had
succeeded in winning Charles's consent to de-
clare war against Spain. Philip II. of Spain
was Catharine's son-in-law and closest ally.
Her entire policy was threatened. At all haz-
ards Coligny must be gotten rid of. The
young King of Navarre, adored leader of the
.4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 123
Protestants, was a constant menace; he, too,
must in some way be disposed of.
There were sinister conferences with Philip
of Spain and with his minister, that incarna-
tion of cruelty and of the Inquisition, the Duke
of Alva.
To the honor of France it may be said that
the initiative, the inception of the horrid deed
which was preparing was not French. It was
conceived in the brain of either this Italian
woman or her Spanish adviser and co-con-
spirator, the Duke of Alva. We shall never
know the inside history of the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew. It must ever remain a matter
of conjecture just how and when it was planned,
but the probabilities point strongly one way.
Charles was to be gradually prepared for It
by his mother. By working upon -his fears,
his suspicions, by stories of plottings against
his life and his kingdom, she w r as to infuriate
him ; and then, while his rage was at its height,
the opportunity for action must be at hand.
The marriage of Charles's sister Margaret with
the young Protestant leader Henry of Navarre,
with its promise of future protection to the Hu-
guenots, was part of the plot. It would lure
124 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
all the leaders of the cause to Paris. Coligny,
Conde, all the heads of the party, were urgently
invited to attend the marriage feast which was
to inaugurate an era of peace.
Admiral Coligny was requested by Catha-
rine, simply as a measure of protection to the
Protestants, to have an additional regiment of
guards in Paris, to act in case of any unfore-
seen violence.
Two days after the marriage, and while the
festivities were at their height, an attempt upon
the life of the old admiral awoke suspicion and
alarm. But Catharine and her son went im-
mediately in person to see the wounded old man,
and to express their grief and horror at the
event. They commanded that a careful list of
the names and abode of every Protestant in
Paris be made, in order, as they said, " to take
them under their own immediate protection."
" My dear father," said the king, " the hurt is
yours, the grief is mine."
At that moment the knives were already
sharpened, every man instructed in his part in
the hideous drama, and the signal for its com-
mencement determined upon. Charles did not
know it, but his mother did. She went to her
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 125
son's room that night, artfully and eloquently
pictured the danger he was in, confessed to him
that she had authorized the attempt upon Co-
ligny, but that it was done because of the ad-
miral's plottings against him, which she had
discovered. But the Guises her enemies and
his they knew it, and would denounce her and
the king ! The only thing now Is to finish the
work. He must die.
Charles was in frightful agitation and stub-
bornly refused. Finalty, with an air of of-
fended dignity, she bowed coldly and said to her
son, " Sir, will you permit me to withdraw' with
my daughter from your kingdom?" The
wretched Charles was conquered. In a sort of
insane fury he exclaimed, " Well, let them kill
him, and all the rest of the Huguenots too.
See that not one remains to reproach me."
This was more than she had hoped. All was
easy now. So eager was she to give the order
before a change of mood, that she flew herself
to give the signal, fully two hours earlier than
was expected. At midnight the tocsin rang out
upon the night, and the horror began.
Lulled to a feeling of security by artfully con-
trived circumstances, husbands, wives, sons,
126 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
daughters, peacefully sleeping, were awakened
to see each other hideously slaughtered.
The stars have looked down upon some ter-
rible scenes in Paris ; her stones are not unac-
quainted with the taste of human blood; but
never had there been anything like this. The
carnage of battle is merciful compared with it.
Shrieking women and children, half-clothed,
fleeing from knives already dripping with
human blood; frantic mothers shielding the
bodies of their children, and wives pleading for
the lives of husbands ; the living hiding beneath
the bodies of the dead.
The cry that ascended to Heaven from Paris
that night was the most awful and despairing
in the world's history. It was centuries of
cruelty crowded into a few hours.
The number slain can never be accurately
stated, but it was thousands. Human blood
is intoxicating. An orgy set in which laughed
at orders to cease. Seven days it continued,
and then died out for lack of material. The
provinces had caught the contagion, and orders
to slay were received and obeyed in all except
two, the Governor of Bayonne, to his honor be
it told, writing to the king in reply : " Your
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 127
Majesty has many faithful subjects In Bayonne,
but not one executioner/'
And where was "his Majesty" while this
work was being done ? How was it with Cath-
arine ? We hear of no regrets, no misgivings ;
that she was calm, collected, suave, and unfath-
omable as ever ; but that Charles, in a strange,
half-frenzied state, was amusing himself by
firing from the windows of the palace at the
fleeing Huguenots. Had he killed himself in
remorse, would it not have been better, instead
of lingering two wretched years, a prey to
mental tortures and an inscrutable malady, be-
fore he died?
Europe was shocked. Christendom averted
her face in horror. But at Madrid and Rome
there was satisfaction.
Catharine and the Duke of Alva had done
their work skilfully, but the result surprised
and disappointed them. Tens of thousands of
Huguenots were slain, which was well; but
many times that number remained, with spirit
unbroken, which was not well.
They had been too merciful! Why had
Henry of Navarre been spared ? Had not Alva
said, " Take the big fish, and let the small fry
228 .4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
go. One salmon is worth more than a thou-
sand frogs."
But Charles considered the matter settled
when he uttered those swelling words to Henry
of Navarre the day after the massacre : " I
mean in future to have one religion in my king-
dom. It is the Mass or death."
All the events leading up to that fateful
night, August 24, 1572, may never be known.
Near the Church of St. Germain d'Auxerrois,
which rang out the signal and was mute wit-
ness of the horror, has just been erected the
statue of the great Coligny, bearing the above
date.
The miserable Charles was not quite base
enough for the part he had played. Tormented
with memories, haggard with remorse, he felt
that he was dying. His suspicious eyes turned
upon his mother, well versed in poisons, as he
knew; and, as he also knew, capable of any-
thing. Was this wasting away the result of
a drug? Mind and body gave way under the
strain. In 1574, less than two years from the
hideous event, Charles IX. was dead.
Catharine's third son now wore the crown of
France. In Henry III. she had as pliant an
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 129
instrument for her will as in the two brothers
preceding him; and, like them, his reign was
spent in alternating conflict with the Protes-
tants and the Duke of Guise. At last, wearied
and exasperated, this hall-Italian and altogether
conscienceless king quite naturally thought of
the stiletto. The old duke, as lie entered the
king's apartment by invitation, was stricken
down by assassins hidden for that purpose.
Henry had not counted on the rebound from
that blow. Catholic France was excited to
such popular fury against him that he threw
himself into the arms of the Protestants, im-
ploring their aid in keeping his crown and his
kingdom; and when himself assassinated, a
year later, the Valois line had become extinct.
By the Salic Law, Henry of Navarre was
King of France. The Bourbon branch had
left the parent stem as long ago as the reign
of Louis the Saint. But as all the other Cape-
tian branches had disappeared, the right of the
plumed knight to the crown was beyond a ques-
tion. So a Protestant and a Huguenot was
King of France.
CHAPTER XII.
AFTER long wandering in strange seas, we
come in view of familiar lights and headlands.
With the advent of the house of Bourbon, we
have grasped a thread which leads directly
down to our own time.
The accession of a Protestant king was
hailed with delirious joy by the Huguenots, and
with corresponding rage by Catholic France.
The one looked forward to redressing of
wrongs and avenging of injuries; and the other
flatly refused submission unless Henry should
recant his heresy and become a convert to the
true faith.
The new king saw there was no bed of roses
preparing for him. After four years of effort
to reconcile the irreconcilable, he decided upon
his course. He was not called to the throne to
rule over Protestant France, nor to be an in-
strument of vengeance for the Huguenots.
130
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 131
He saw that the highest good of the kingdom
required not that he should impose upon it
either form of belief or worship, but give equal
opportunity and privilege to both.
To the consternation of the Huguenots, he
announced himself ready to listen to the argu-
ments in favor of the religion of Rome; and
it took just five hours of deliberation to con-
vince him of its truth. He declared him-
self ready to abjure his old faith. Bitter re-
proaches on the one side and rejoicings on the
other greeted this decision. It was not heroic.
But many even among the Protestants ac-
knowledged it to be an act of supreme political
wisdom.
Peace was restored, and the Edict of Nantes,
which quickly followed, proved to his old
friends, the Huguenots, that they were not
forgotten. The Protestants, with disabilities
removed, shared equal privileges with the
Catholics throughout the kingdom, and the first
victory for religious liberty was splendidly won.
An era of unexampled prosperity dawned.
Never had the kingdom been so wisely and
beneficently governed. Sincerity, simplicity,
and sympathy had taken the place of dissimu-
132 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
lation, craft, and cruelty. Uplifting- agencies
were everywhere at work, reaching even to the
peasantry, that forgotten element in the nation.
The formal abjuration of the Protestant faith
was made bv the King in the Church of St.
* o
Denis in 1593. This church also witnessed
the marriage of Henry with Marie de' Medici,
after his release from her debased relative,
Margaret of Valois, daughter of Catharine de'
Medici. Henry IV., great although he was,
was not above the ordinary weaknesses of hu-
manity, and, captivated by the beauty of Marie,
was a willing party to the Italian marriage
which was urged upon him, which marriage
was the one mistake of a great reign.
It was not to be expected that any minister
would rise to the full stature of Henry IV. at
this time. But in the Duke of Sully he had a
wise and efficient instrument for his plan, which
was out of the chaos left by the devastation of
thirty years of religious wars, to evolve peace
and prosperity; and to create economic condi-
tions upon a foundation insuring growth and
permanence.
The royal authority, impaired by the succes-
sors of Francis, must first be restored. And to
.4 SHORT HISTORY Of FRANCE. 133
that end all political elements, including the
States General, must be held firmly down ; and
that body, representing the Tiers Etat, was
never summoned after France was well in hand
by the king who was par excellence the friend
of the people !
It is the Edict of Xantes which stands pre-
eminent among- the events of this reign, and
which is Henry's monument in the annals of
France. His foreign policy was controlled
by a desire to check the preponderance of the
Hapsburgs; that being. In fact the dominant
sentiment in Europe at that time. But a re-
markable proof of the breadth of his treatment
of this subject is the plan he formulated of a
European tribunal composed of the five great
powers, which should insist upon the mainte-
nance of a balance of power a phrase com-
mon enough now, but heard then for the first
time ; and which had for its immediate purpose
the separating of the crown of Spain and the
empire, by forbidding their being held by mem-
bers of the same family, and of course designed
as a check upon the Hapsburgs.
This was a pet theory with Henry, and the
subject of much discussion with Sully and of
134 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
negotiation with Elizabeth, Queen of England,
at the very time when Philip II. of Spain, in
pursuance of a precisely opposite policy, had
been moving heaven and earth to bring about
a marriage with that extraordinary sister of
his dead wife Mary. Henry did not witness
the realization of his dream. But time has jus-
tified its wisdom, and modern statesmanship
has been able to devise no wiser plan than that
conceived in the mind of this enlightened king
nearly three centuries ago.
How much France lost by Ravaillac's dag-
ger can only be surmised, and when Henry,
fatally stricken (1610), was carried dying into
the Louvre, a cry- of grief arose from Catholic
and Protestant alike throughout the kingdom.
After a reign of twenty-one years, the saga-
cious ruler, who had done more than any other
to make the country great and happy, was the
victim of assassination. And France once more
was the sport of a cruel fate which placed her in
the hands of a woman and a Medici. Marie,
the widow of Henry IV., was appointed regent
during the minority of her son Louis aged ten
years.
The regency of this woman is a story of
.4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 155
cabals and the intrigues of aspiring" favorites.
If Marie had not the ability of her great kins-
woman Catharine, it must be confessed neither
had she her darker vices. She was simply in-
triguing and vulgar, and the willing instrument
for designing people cleverer than herself. So
powerful was the influence of Eleonora Galigai
and her husband. Concini, both Italians like
herself, that in that superstitious age it was as-
cribed to magic. Marie became the mere sec-
retary to record the wishes of these parasites.
Concini was made marquis, then minister.
Whom he commended was elevated, and whom
he denounced was abased. Public indignation
reached its climax when this adventurer was
finally created Marshal of France, before whom
counts and dukes must bow. So furious was
the storm raised by this, that Marie declared
her willingness to surrender the regency, and
after summoning the States General she pre-
sented her son, Louis XIII., thirteen years of
age, declaring that he was qualified to reign.
Only once again was this body to be called
together. That was in 1789, by Louis XVI.,
when it was transformed into a National As-
sembly.
136 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
But when it was discovered that the power
of the detested pair was as great behind the
boy king as it had been behind his mother, the
storm gathered again from all parts of the king-
dom. It was France in struggle with Concini,
the man who was audaciously sending princes
of the blood and dukes to the Bastille.
But a counter-influence was weaving about
Louis. He was made to realize the indignity
to himself in letting two vulgar Italians usurp
his authority. Thus Albert de Luynes, his
adored friend, procured his signature to a paper
ordering the immediate destruction of Concini
and his wife. And when Louis had seen Con-
cini despatched by his own agents in the court
of the Louvre, and the arrest, trial, and execu-
tion of Eleonora (upon the charge of sorcery),
he completed the work by banishing his mother,
only to fall immediately into the power of Al-
beit de Luynes, himself an intriguing parasite,
who intended to play the very same role as the
pair he had overthrown.
The clever Eleonora, when arraigned on the
charge of sorcery, replied, " The only magic I
have used is that of a strong mind over a weak
one." Albert de Luynes's head was never car-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 137
ried about Paris on a pike, as was hers. But
he experimented with the same kind of magic.
This wretched period after the death of the
great Henry had occupied twelve years. But
in 1622 Cardinal Richelieu took his seat among
the advisers of the king. The true man had
been found. King, nobles, people of all ranks
and religions, realized that a master had ap-
peared in the land ; a master inscrutable in his
purposes, and clothed with a mysterious power.
The foundations of this man's policy lay
deep, out of sight of all save his own far-
reaching intelligence. Pitiless as an iceberg,
he crushed every obstacle to his purpose. Im-
partial as fate, with no loves, no hatreds, catho-
lics, protestants, nobles, parliaments, one after
another were borne down before his determina-
tion to make the king, what he had not been
since Charlemagne, supreme in France.
The will of the great minister mowed down
like a scythe. The power of the grandees, that
last remnant of feudalism, and a perpetual
menace to monarchy, was swept away. One
great noble after another was humiliated and
shorn of his privileges, if not of his head.
The Huguenots, being first shaken into sub-
138 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
mission, saw their political liberties torn from
them by the stroke of a pen ; and even while the
Catholics were making merry over this discom-
fiture the minister was planning- to send Hen-
rietta, sister of the king, across the channel to
become queen of Protestant England, as wife
of Charles I. But the act of supreme audacity
was to come. This high prelate of the Church,
this cardinal-minister, formed an alliance with
Gusiavus Adolphus, the great leader of the
Protestants in the war upon the emperor and
the pope !
He allowed no religion, no class, to sway or
to hold him. He was for France; and her
greatness and glory augmented under his ruth-
less dominion. By his extraordinary genius he
made the reign of a commonplace king one of
dazzling splendor; and while gratifying his
own colossal ambition, he so strengthened the
foundations of the monarchy that princes of the
blood themselves could not shake it.
It was great, it was dazzling, but of all his
work there is but one thing which revolutions
and time have not swept away : the " French
Academy" alone survives as his monument.
Out of a gathering of literary friends he ere-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCK 139
ated a national institution, its object the estab-
lishing a court of last appeal in all that makes
for eloquence in speaking or writing the French
language. In a country where few things en-
dure, this has remained unchanged for two
hundred and thirty years.
But this master of statecraft, this creator of
despotic monarchy, had one unsatisfied ambi-
tion. He would have exchanged all his honors
for the ability to write one play like those of
Corneille. Hungering for literary distinction,
he could not have gotten into his own Academy
had he not created it. And jealous of his
laurels, he hated Corneille as much as he did
the enemies of France.
The feeble King Louis XIII. manifested
wisdom in at least one thing. He permitted
this greatest statesman of his time, and one of
the greatest perhaps of all time, to have a free
hand in managing his kingdom. And what-
ever the pressure from the queen-mother, from
cabals and intriguing nobles, he never yielded
the point, but kept his great minister in his ser-
vice as long as they both lived. This was espe-
cially commendable in Louis because they were
personally antagonistic, and also because the
140 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
queen-mother constantly used her powerful In-
fluence over her son for his downfall.
Marie had been permitted to return to Paris,
where her son, perhaps to console her for the
loss of the Concinis, had built for her the
Palais de Luxembourg, intended as a remi-
niscence of her dear Italy, with its Medicean ar-
chitecture and Italian gardens and fountains.
Here she held her little court in great splendor,
and here she wove her ineffectual webs for
Richelieu's defeat and downfall. It is said that
at one time Louis at her instigation had ac-
tually taken the pen in hand to sign the order
for his minister's disgrace, when that vigilant
and omniscient being, perfectly aware of what
was occurring, appeared from behind the cur-
tains. And Louis, quailing before the superior
will of a master, sent his vicious, intriguing
mother into perpetual banishment And we
are told that Marie, the subject of those Im-
mortal canvases now at the Louvre, was ac-
tually sheltered and fed by the great painter at
his own home in the day of her disgrace and
poverty.
It is not strange that Peter the Great pro-
nounced Richelieu the model statesman ! Their
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 141
Ideals were the same. The minister Intended
that everything In France should lie helpless at
the feet of royalty ; that kingship should absorb
Into Itself every source of power. While Crom-
well was tearing down a throne in England and
kading a king to a scaffold, Richelieu, facing
every class, current, and force, was making the
throne impregnable in France, and preparing
a magnificent inheritance for the infant Louis
XIV., then in his cradle.
Queen-mother, nobles, parliaments, and
Protestants must be taught to obey. The Hu-
guenots at the siege of La Rochelle, lasting
fifteen months, learned their lesson. The pun-
ishment for their revolt was the loss of every
military and political privilege. But although
there were to be no more political assemblies,
the edict of Nantes was to be rigidly enforced,
and their rights and immunities under It made
inviolable. Louis the King saw his most in-
timate friend. Cinq Mars, sent to the scaffold ;
his brother Gaston, Duke of Orleans, thrown
into the Bastille like a common prisoner; his
mother in exile and poverty. But he also saw
himself without the trouble of governing, sur-
rounded by homage and adulation, towering
142 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
high above everything else In France, and was
content.
The growing power of Austria and the as-
cendency of the Hapsburgs was, as we have
seen, the nightmare of Europe at this period.
But the Reformation was tearing the empire
almost asunder. A Protestant Prussia was
trying to straggle away from a Catholic Aus-
tria. Richelieu cared nothing for Catholics
nor for Protestants. His aim was to weaken
the hands of the Hapsburgs. And if he joined
the Protestant leader Gustavus Adolphus in a
religious crusade, it was with this end in view.
The marriage of Louis with the Infanta of
Spain, known as Anne of Austria, was doubt-
less a part of the same line of policy, and was
the beginning of many attempts to draw the
Spanish peninsula under the control of France.
When the end of all these schemings arrived,
on the 4th day of December, 1642, Richelieu
calmly laid down to die in his princely resi-
dence known at that time as the Palais Car-
dinal. But as it was his dying gift to the king,
the name was changed to the Palais Royal.
Upon the death of Louis XIIL, which occurred
in 1643, onl }' a few months after that of his
A SNORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 143
minister, the widowed Queen Anne, with her
Infant son, Louis XIV., removed from the
Louvre to the Palais Royal, which continued
to be the residence of the Grand Monarch for
some time after his majority.
Anne was appointed regent for her son, net
yet five years old, and, to the surprise of even--
one, immediately called to her aid as her ad-
viser not a Frenchman, as was expected, but
an Italian, Cardinal Mazarin. So the fate of
the kingdom was in the hands of two foreign-
ers, a Spanish queen-regent and an Italian
minister.
Richelieu's and Mazarin's methods were the
opposite of each other. One was direct, the
other tortuous and indirect. In true Italian
fashion Mazarin overcame by seeming to yield ;
and what he said was the thing he did not mean.
Intrigue and briber}- were his Implements and
weapons.
The situation awoke distrust. It was a time
to recover lost privileges, and to struggle out of
the chains riveted by Richelieu. A civil war
known as the Fronde was the result.
As all classes had grievances, all were repre-
sented In this general undoing of the last min-
144 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
ister's great work. But as no two classes de-
sired the same thing, the miserable war, without
genius and without system, miserably failed.
The royal cause triumphed; and Richelieu's
political structure was not even shaken. Maz-
arin stood inflexibly by the work of his great
predecessor. Turenne and Conde were the
military heroes of this, as well as of the subse-
quent foreign wars, resulting in the acquisition
of Alsace (1648) and other great territorial
expansion.
When Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661, the
young king was asked to whom the ministers
should bring their portfolios. To which came
the unexpected reply, " To me."
CHAPTER XIII.
THE wily Italian was gone, and Louis XIV.
settled himself upon the throne which Riche-
lieu had rendered so exalted and immovable.
Cardinal Mazarin had said of the young
Louis that " there was enough in him to make
four kings, and one honest man." His great-
ness consisted more in amplitude than in kind.
Nature made him in prodigal mood. He was
an average man of colossal proportions. His
ability, courage, dignity, industry, greed for
power and possessions, were all on a magnifi-
cent scale, and so were his vanity, his loves, his
cruelties, his pleasures, his triumphs, and his
disappointments.
No king more wickedly oppressed France,
and none made her more glorious. He made
her feared abroad and magnificent at home, but
he desolated her, and drained her resources
with ambitious wars. He crowned her with
145
146 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
imperishable laurels in literature, art, and every
manifestation of genius, but he signed the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and drove
out of his kingdom 500,000 of the best of his
subjects.
The marriage of the Dauphin with the In-
fanta of Spain had occurred before he attained
his majority. It was planned by Mazarin, and
was a part of the policy left as a fatal bequest
to Louis XIV. by that minister.
The Salic Law was not recognized in Spain.
Hence, the crown might descend to an heiress,
r.r.d by her be transmitted to her husband.
Such was the hope in the marriage of Louis
with the Infanta ; the hope of some happy turn
of fortune, some break in the line of succession
whereby the Spanish kingdom might be ab-
sorbed into a Bourbon empire, as it had once
been in the empire of the Hapsbttrgs. This
was the ignis fafuus which was to control the
policy of this stormy reign, and which was to
envelop it at last in the clouds of defeat and
disaster.
The secret of Louis 5 greatness was his in-
stinctive recognition of greatness in others.
His new minister, Colbert, to whom he owed
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 147
so much, was a man of the people, and a prot-
estant. He it was who discovered the pecula-
tions of Fouquet, the magnificent Minister of
Finance, who was building a palace at Vaux
greater than the king himself could afford, and
who was suddenly swept from this princely
residence into the Bastille, where he spent the
remaining years of his life with plenty of lei-
sure in which to think upon the forty thousand
pounds he had expended upon that fete he gave
in honor of his royal master ; and to recall the
splendors of the supper and the size of the ban-
queting-haPi, which Mansart, Le Brun, and the
best that Italy could furnish at that time had
made beautiful.
It is said that the unfortunate visit of the
king to his minister's abode resulted in the
creation of Versailles as a suburban residence.
From the Palais de St. Germain,, on the heights
in the suburbs of Paris, Louis could see the
Cathedral of St. Denis, where were the royal
vaults and the ancestors he must some day join.
So depressing was this view to him, and so
charmed was he with the plan of Fouquet's pal-
ace and gardens, that artists were immediately
set to work to make one more royal at Ver-
148 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
sallies, where his father, Louis XIII., used to
have his hunting-box; the place where that
much-governed king used to go to hide away
from his scheming mother and his argus-eyed
minister. The genius of Colbert was severely
taxed to supply the means for Louis' magnifi-
cent tastes and for his foreign wars, at the same
time. Even Colbert could not create money
out of nothing. The burden must rest some-
where, and just as surely must ultimately
be borne by the people.
The choice of Louvois as Minister of War
was no less happy than that of Colbert in
Finance. And with Vauban to build his de-
fences, Turenne and Luxembourg and the great
Conde to lead his armies, it is not strange that
there were victories.
The four great wars of Louis' reign were
not for theatrical effect, like that of the fanciful
Charles VIIL in Italy. They were all in pur-
suance of a serious and definite purpose. Just
or unjust, wise or unwise, they were planned
in order to reach some boundary, or to secure
some strategic position essential to France.
These wars were :
First The war upon the Spanish Nether-
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 149
lands, ending with the Treaty of Aix-la-Cha-
pelle, 1668.
Second The invasion of the Dutch Repub-
lic, ending with the peace of Nymwegen, 1678.
Third War with the coalition of European
States, closing with the Treaty of Ryswick,
1697.
Fourth War of the Spanish Succession,
closed by the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713.
The first of these wars, undertaken because
Louis believed and intended that Flanders
should belong to France, to which it was geo-
graphically allied, was ostensibly undertaken in
order to recover the unpaid down 7 which had
been promised by Spain in exchange for Louis'
renunciation of any claim upon the throne of
Spain which might result from his marriage
with the Infanta Maria Theresa. His con-
quest of the Spanish possessions in Flanders
might have been supposed to set at rest for-
ever the question of a claim upon the Span-
ish throne. But we shall hear of that again.
The success of this war made Louis, at twenty-
nine years of age, the most heroic figure in
Europe. Every one bowed before him, and
everything seemed to be gravitating toward
150 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
him as toward a central sun. Not alone nobil-
ity, but even genius put on his livery and
became sycophantish, Bossuet and even Mo-
liere, hungering for his smile, and in despair,
if he frowned.
This was the time of the supremacy of the
beautiful Louise la Valliere. Her reign was
brief, and, the king's infatuation being passed,
she was to spend the rest of her dreary life in
a Carmelite convent, hearing only the far-off
echoes from the brilliant world in which she was
once the central and envied figure.
The Dutch Republic had come under Louis'
displeasure and was marked for his next for-
eign campaign. This (to his mind) insignif-
icant nation of fishermen and small traders
had presumed to stand in his path. So the
most magnificent army since the Crusades in
1672 invaded the peaceful little state of Hol-
land. As one after another of the cities help-
lessly fell, someone asked why Louis came
himself why he did not send his valet?
Louis insolently demanded as the price of
peace the surrender of all their fortified cities,
the payment of twenty million francs, and the
renunciation of the Protestant faith.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 151
The answer of William of Nassau was an
unexpected one. The history of modern times
has nothing more heroic than this little mer-
cantile state defying the greatest potentate in
Europe. William of Nassau knew perfectly
well that every battle meant defeat. The
thing to do was to make battles impossible by
inundating their fertile fields. When he saw
the destruction of life and property in one scale
and political slaver}- in the other, he did not
hesitate. The dikes were quietly opened.
Turenne and Luxembourg and Vauban were
baffled as completely as Napoleon in Russia.
And when the magnificent army had evacuated
the flooded country, the dikes were quietly
closed again and time and windmills restored
their fields to fertility.
In the meantime William had been drawing
to himself powerful allies. Half of Europe
was in league with him in the battles he now
fought upon the Rhine. But the French were
victorious. And after the peace of Nym-
w r egen, 1678, Louis had reached the zenith of
his power.
Human pretension and arrogance could go
no farther. He began to feel that France was
152 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
his own personal possession and that Europe
might be. It was the combination of a great
king with a small man which produced this
composite being. He had built Versailles, a
palace unmatched since the Caesars. He not
only commanded the presence, but the obse-
quious presence of all that was illustrious and
great at a time when France was in the full
flower of her splendid genius. Corneille,
Racine, Moliere, if permitted to be, must pay
him an almost idolatrous homage. The beau-
tiful Valliere was sent away, and de Montes-
pan's reign had commenced.
But when Colbert died in 1685, Louis fell
under an influence which was to be transform-
ing. He had been burning the illuminating oil
of youth at very high pressure. Perhaps it was
exhausted. He grew serious. De Montespan
was sent away the orgies at Versailles ceased,
the court became decorous, almost austere,
and with the awakening of conscience, of
course, the king became more sensitive to the
heresies of the Huguenots !
He was drifting toward the fatal mistake of
his life. He revoked the Edict of Nantes.
Two millions of people by the stroke of his pen,
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. I S3
at the bidding of de Maintenon, were disfran-
chised ; prohibited under severe penalties from
any observance of their religion ; their property
confiscated., an attempt to flee from the country
punished by the galleys.
The prisons were full of Protestants and the
scaffolds dyed with their blood. Two hundred
thousand perished by imprisonment, by the gal-
leys, and the executioner; while two hundred
thousand more managed to escape to America
and to the lands of the enemies of France, which
they would enrich with their skill.
Not a word of protest came from a person in
France. Not even from Fenelon or Bossuet!
Madame de Maintenon told him it was the
" glorious climax of a glorious reign." Madame
de Sevigne said it was " magnificent ! " And
Bossuet, greatest of French divines, exclaimed,
" It is the miracle of the century! "
France at one stroke was impoverished.
The skill, the trained hand, the element which
was at the foundation of her excellence, and of
that which was to constitute her future suprem-
acy in the world, had gone to enrich her ene-
mies. And whether in Germany, in England,
or America, no foreign people have had such
254 -4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
glad welcome as was given to the Hugue-
nots.
Then came the rebound in a form not ex-
pected. William of Orange was now King of
England. James had been driven off his
throne, and his daughter Mary and her hus-
band, William of Orange, wore the double
crown. All the hostile European states, under
William's leadership, sprang together for the
common defence of Europe from this detested
foe.
The smothered hatred of Holland and every
protestant state burst into flame, and the great
War of the Coalition commenced. Beginning
with the League of Augsburg, in 1688, it con-
tinued until the peace of Ryswick, 1697, with
the defeat of France all along the line.
Humiliated and broken, there remained for
the king an opportunity to retrieve the past
by attaching the Spanish peninsula to France.
There was a vacant throne at Madrid which his
grandson Philip, through the neglected Queen
Maria Theresa, might claim as his inheritance.
Such were the conditions which might still
change defeat into triumph. The fact that the
right to the succession had been waived by the
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 15$
king was easily disposed of. Philip, Louis'
grandson, presented his claim in competition
with that of the son of Leopold I., Emperor of
Germany. When the pope, with whom the de-
cision lay, decided in favor of Philip, grand-
son of the great Louis, all Europe sprang to the
aid of the Austrian archduke in the war of the
Spanish succession.
It was a little side play in the opening of this
great drama, which brought the kingdom of
Prussia into existence. Frederick, elector of
Brandenburg, when called upon to arm by the
emperor, refused to do so except upon one con-
dition: that he might wear the title of king
instead of elector; which condition was
granted, with the stipulation that the name of
Prussia, a detached piece of territory the an-
cestors of Frederick had cut out of the side of
Russia, be substituted for Brandenburg. So
out of this war of personal ambition there had
sprung a new kingdom, the kingdom of Prus-
sia, of which France was to hear much in the
future.
England was not eager to join the new coali-
tion in defence of the Hapsburg, whom in com-
mon with the rest of Europe she had for years
156 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
been trying to pull down. But when Louis
insolently espoused the cause of the exiled King
James, and promised by force to place the pre-
tender on the throne, then she needed no urg-
ing, and sent Marlborough and the flower o
her army to join Prince Eugene in Germany.
It was Marlborough at Blenheim (1702)
who drove the iron of defeat into the soul of
Louis XIV. When the war was ended he had
made every concession demanded ; had given up
a vast extent of territory ; banished the English
pretender from his kingdom; and acknowl-
edged Anne as queen of Great Britain.
By the provisions of the treaty (the Peace of
Utrecht) Gibraltar passed to England; Spain
ceded the Netherlands and all her possessions
in Italy to the German empire. And so the fine
threads diplomacy had been spinning over the
Continent for two centuries were ruthlessly
brushed away as a spider's web.
An imbittered, broken old man, shorn of his
omnipotence, who had outlived his fame and his
worshippers, was dying in his great palace at
Versailles; his only solace the austere woman
who had inspired the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, and who upon the death of his un-
.4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 157
happy queen he had privately made his wife.
Marie Therese had borne his mad infatuation
for Louise la Valliere; la Valliere had carried
her broken heart to a convent, and been super-
seded by de Montespan, and de Montespan had
invited her own destruction by bringing into
her household Madame de Maintenon, the pious
widow of the poet Scarron, in order that the
austere virtues of that lady might be engrafted
upon the children of the royal household.
Grave, ambitious, talented, the governess of
de Montespan's children was not too much
absorbed in her duties to find ways of estab-
lishing an influence over the king.
This man, who had absorbed into himself all
the functions of the government, who was min-
isters, magistrates, parliaments, all in one, this
central sun of whom Corneille, Moliere, Racine
were but single rays, was destined to be en-
slaved in his old age by a designing adventur-
ess; her will his law. The hey-day of youth
having passed, he was beginning to be anxious
about his soul. She artfully pricked his con-
science, and de Montespan was sent away, but
de Maintenon remained.
She next convinced him that the only fitting
158 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
atonement for his sins was to drive heresy out
of his kingdom, and re-establish the true faith
At her bidding he undid the glorious work of
Henry IV., signed the Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, and brutally stamped out Protes-
tantism.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies the stake in the great game played in
Europe was the headship, the pre-eminent posi-
tion held by the house of Hapsburg. The
entire reign of Louis XIV. had had this for its
ultimate object. He seemed many times near
it ; but was never to reach the goal. The ab-
sorption of Spain was a last and desperate
attempt. It had failed. France had not won
the leadership of European civilization.
In the coming reign, new forces, new condi-
tions, were to widen the field of national ambi-
tions. And it was the nation across the channel
which would grasp these forces and distance
her rivals in an advance along the untried paths
of commerce and a world-wide expansion.
With a strange apathy France had seen her-
self mistress of a large part of the American
Continent, won for her by adventurous French-
men and Catholic missionaries. She did prac-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 159
tically nothing to develop this magnificent co-
lonial empire. Failing to comprehend chang-
ing conditions, the same old problem, with a
towering house of Hapsburg, obscured her
view, and remained the great unchanging fact
about which her policy revolved.
Louis XV. was five years old when, in 1/15,
he became heir to a throne absolutely rigid.
The best work of Richelieu and Mazarin and
Louis XIV. had been expended upon it. Ab-
solutism could go no farther. The king was
all; next below him a fawning, obsequious
nobility, and then that vague entity known as
" the people," a remote invisible force, sustain-
ing the weight of the splendid pyramid, the
apex of which was this boy of five.
The young Louis was being prepared to sit
upon this giddy elevation. The Duke of Or-
leans, his accomplished cousin, a competent
instructor in vice, was chosen as regent, and
the royal education began. The best and rarest
of the world's culture was at his service.
Fenelon, the polished ecclesiastic, fed him the
classics in tempting form from his own Tele-
maque, written for the purpose. Although this
work was later suppressed by the boy's royal
i6o A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE*
father tinder the suspicion of being a covert
satire upon his own reign, in which Madame
de Alontespan was represented by Calypso ; and
other famous or infamous members of his court
also appeared in thin disguise.
The handsome boy was breathing the atmos-
phere of genius created by an age which com-
pares well with those of Pericles and Augustus
and the Medici, and nourished at the same time
by the exhalations from a new crop of vices
growing out of the decaying remains of those
left by the old court.
CHAPTER XIV.
SUCH was the preparation for a supreme
crisis in the life of the Kingdom.
The enormous debt left by the last reign
taxed the ingenuity of the regent to its utmost.
Then it was that John Law, the Scotchman,
presented his great financial scheme of making
unlimited wealth out of paper, which was just
what the regent needed. The collapse came
quickly, in 1720, bringing ruin to thousands,
and leaving the country in more desperate need
than before.
When declared of age, in 1723, a marriage
was arranged for Louis with Marie Leczinska,
daughter of the exiled Polish King Stanislas.
Europe at this time was agitated over the suc-
cession to the throne of Austria, as the empire
was now called. The Salic Law excluded
female heirs, and the emperor, Charles VI.,
had died in 1718, leaving only a daughter,
Maria Theresa, one year old. But a prag-
161
1 62 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
matic sanction, once more invoked, seems to
have covered the necessities of the situation by
providing that the succession in the absence of
a male heir might descend to a female, and so
there was a young and beautiful empress on
the throne at Vienna, who was going to make
a great deal of history for Europe; and who
would open her brilliant reign by a valiant fight
for possession of Silesia, which the young king
of Prussia intended to seize as an addition to
his own new kingdom. This young King
Frederick was also making history very fast,
and after a stormy career was going to con-
vert his Kingdom Into a Power, and to be the
one sovereign of his age whom the world would
call Great! But at this particular period of his
youth, Frederick and his nobility, still blinded
by the splendors of the reign of Louis XIV.,
were mere servile imitators of the court at Ver-
sailles, and the culture and the civilization for
which they hungered were French only
French; and for Frederick, an intimate com-
panionship with Voltaire was his supreme de-
sire. But a closer view of the witty, cynical
Frenchman wrought a wonderful change.
The finely pointed shafts of ridicule when aimed
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 163
at himself were not so entertaining. And his
guest, no longer persona grata, w r as escorted
over the frontier to France.
A nearer view of Versailles at this time
might also have disenchanted these worship-
pers at the shrine of French civilization. A
king absolutely indifferent to conditions in
his kingdom, Immersed in debasing pleasures,
while Madame de Pompadour actually ruled
the state this Is not the worst they would
have seen ! Destitute of shame, of pity, of
patriotism, and of human affection, what did It
mean to the king that his people \vere growing
desperate under the enormous taxation made
necessary by incessant wars and by the extrava-
gant expenditures of the court ? Louis simply
turned his back upon the whole problem of ad-
ministration, and left his ministers, Fleury, and
later de Choiseul, to deal with the misery and
the discontent and to make their way through
the financial morass as best they might.
The power of Madame de Pompadour may
be Imagined w T hen we learn that Maria Theresa,
empress and proud daughter of the Caesars,
when she needed the friendship of Louis XIV.,
In her struggle with Frederick of Prussia, in
164 .4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
order to win him to her side, wrote a flatter-
Ing letter to this woman.
This friendship, so artfully sought by the
empress, led to another very different and very
momentous alliance. A marriage was ar-
ranged between her little daughter, Marie
Antoinette, and the boy Louis, who was to be
the future king of France. The dauphin, the
dauphiness, and their eldest child were all dead.
So Louis, the second son of the dauphin, was
the heir to his grandfather, Louis XV.
How should the empress of Austria, born,
nurtured, and fed in the very centre of despot-
ism, utterly misunderstanding as she must the
past, the present, and the future, how should
she suspect that the throne of France would be
a scaff old for her child ? Hapsburg and Bour-
bon were to her realities as enduring as the
Alps.
In the meantime England and France had
come into collision over their boundaries in
America, and the war opened by Braddock and
his young aide, Washington, had been a still
further drain upon- impoverished France.
With the loss of Montreal and Quebec, those
two strongholds in the north, the French were
A SHORT HISTORY OF FPJLXCE. 165
virtually defeated. And when the end came,
France had lost every inch of territory on the
North American Continent, and had ceded her
vast possessions, extending from Canada to
the Gulf of Mexico, to England and Spain.
So while England was steadily building up
a world-empire, penetrated with the forces of
a modern age, France, loaded with debt, was
taxing a people crying for bread taxing a
starving people for money to procure unimagi-
nable luxuries and pleasures for Madame du
Barry, who had succeeded to the place once
held by Madame de Pompadour. Did she de-
sire a snowstorm and a sleighride in midsum-
mer, these must be created and made possible.
And one may see to-day at Versailles the
sleigh in which this mad caprice was realized.
The various instructors of Louis XV. had
not taught him amlhing about mind and soul
processes. They were quite unaware that there
had commenced a movement in the brain of
France, which was going to liberate terrific
forces forces which would sweep before them
the work of the Richelieus and the Mazarins
and the Colberts as if it were chaff.
The human mind was probing, questioning.
1 66 .4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
doubting, everything it had once believed. And
as one after another cherished beliefs disap-
peared, it grew still more daring. The whole
religious, social, and political system was
wrong. The only remedy was to overthrow
it all, and crown reason as the sovereign of a
new era. Such was the ferment at work be-
neath the surface as Louis was devising incred-
ible extravagances for du Barry. And there
was rage in men's hearts as they wrote insult-
Ing lines upon his equestrian statue in the Place
Louis Quinze.
The Place Louis Quinze was soon to be the
Place de la Revolution. The bronze statue was
to be melted Into bullets by a maddened popu-
lace, and standing on that very spot was to
be the guillotine which would destroy king,
queen, the king's sister, and a great part of the
nobility of France.
It is said that the three great events of
modern times are the Reformation, the Ameri-
can War of Independence, and the French
Revolution. Events such as these have a
lurid background, a long vista of causes be-
hind them! A French Revolution is not the
work of a day, nor of a single man. There had
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 167
been a steady movement toward this event for
a thousand years in fact, ever since the dogma
that labor is degrading was placed at the foun-
dation of the social structure of France.
The direct causes which were precipitating
the crisis in the closing eighteenth century were
financial and economic, while the contributing
causes were a remarkable intellectual move-
ment and the War of Independence in Amer-
ica. It is possible that a king with a heart and
a brain, and the moral sense which belongs to
ordinary humanity, might have averted this
tragic outburst, and at least have delayed the
event by awakening hope. The Revolution
was born of hopeless miser}'. With the reign
of Louis XV. hope died, and his successor fell
heir to the inevitable.
A heartless sybarite, depraved in tastes, with-
out sense of responsibility or comprehension of
his times, a brutalized voluptuary governed by
a succession of designing women, regardless of
national poverty, indulging in wildest extrava-
gance such was the man in whom was vested
the authority rendered so absolute by Richelieu ;
such the man who opened up a pathway for
the storm.
1 68 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
As for the nobility, their degradation may
be imagined when it is said there was as bitter
rivalry between titled and illustrious fathers to
secure for their daughters the coveted position
held by Madame de Pompadour, as for the
highest offices of State.
Could the upper ranks fall lower than this ?
Had not the kingdom reached its lowest depths,
where its foreign policy was determined by the
amount of consideration shown to Madame de
Pompadour? But this woman, whose friend-
ship was artfully sought by the great Em-
press Maria Theresa, was superseded, and the
fresher charms of Madame du Barry enslaved
the king. The deposed favorite could not sur-
vive her fall, and died of a broken heart. It
is said that as Louis, looking from an upper
window of his palace, saw the coffin borne out
in a drenching rain, he smiled, and said, ic Ah,
the marquise has a bad day for her journey."
It may be imagined that the man who could be
so pitiless to the woman he had loved would
feel little pity for the people whom he had not
loved, but whom he knew only as a remote,
obscure something, which held up the weight of
his glory.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 169
But this " obscure something " was under-
going strange transformation. The greater
light at the surface had sent some glimmering
rays down into the mass below, which began
to awaken and to think. Misery, hopeless and
abject, was changing into rage and thirst for
vengeance.
A new class had come Into existence which
was not noble, but with highly trained intelli-
gence It looked with contempt and loathing
upon the frivolous, half-educated nobles.
Scorn was added to the ferment of human pas-
sions beneath the surface, and when Voltaire
had spoken, and the restraints of religion were
loosened, no living hand, not that of a Riche-
lieu nor a Louis XIV., could have averted the
coming doom. But no one seems to have sus-
pected w j hat was approaching.
A -wonderful literature had come into ex-
istence, not stately and classic as In the age pre-
ceding, but instinct with a new sort of life,
The profoundest themes which can occupy the
mind of man were handled with marvellous
lightness of touch and clothed with prismatic
brilliancy of speech; but all was negation.
None tried to build; all to demolish. The
170 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
black-winged angel of Destruction was hover-
ing over the land.
Then Rousseau tossed his dreamy abstrac-
tions into the quivering air, and the formula,
" Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," was
caught up by the titled aristocracy as a charm-
ing idyllic toy, while princes, dukes, and mar-
quises amused themselves with a dream of
Arcadian simplicity, to be attained in some
indefinite way, in some remote and equally in-
definite future. It was all a masquerade. No
reality, no sincerity, no convictions, good or
evil. The only thing that was real was that an
over-taxed, impoverished people was exasper-
ated and hungry.
Did the king need new supplies for his un-
imaginable luxuries, they were taxed. Was
it necessary to have new accessions to French
"glory," in order to allay popular clamor or
discontent, they must supply the men to fight
the glorious battles, and the means with which
to pay them. Every burden fell at last upon
this lowest stratum of the State; the nobility
and clergy, while owning two-thirds of the
land, being nearly exempt from taxation.
And yet the king and nobility of France, in
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 171
love with Rousseau's theories, were airily dis-
cussing the " rights of man " wolves and
foxes coming together to talk over the sacred-
ness of the rights of property, or the occupants
of murderers 1 row growing eloquent over the
sanctity of human life! How incomprehen-
sible that among those quick-witted French-
men there seems not one to have realized that
the logical sequence of the formula, " Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity/ 7 must be, " Down
with the Aristocrats ! )}
And so the surface which Richelieu had con-
verted into adamant grew thinner and thinner
each day, until king and court danced upon a
mere gilded crust, unconscious of the abysmal
fires beneath. Some of those powdered heads
fell into the executioner's basket twenty-five
years later. Did they recall this time? Did
Madame du Barn 7 think of it ? Did she exult
at her triumph over de Pompadour, when she
was dragged shrieking and struggling to the
guillotine?
Five years before the close of this miserable
reign an event occurred seemingly of small im-
portance to Europe. A child was born in an
172 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
obscure Italian household. His name was Na-
poleon Bonaparte. His birthplace, the island
of Corsica, had only two months before been
incorporated with France. The fates even
then were watching over this child of destiny,
who might, by a slight turn of events then im-
minent, have been born a subject of Spain, or
Germany, or of George III. of England.
The impoverished Republic of Genoa was in
desperate need of money. The island could be
had by the highest bidder, and in 1 768 it was
purchased by France, just in time to make the
great Corsican a French citizen.
Indeed, all the performers in the approaching
drama were assembled. Three young princes,
grandsons of Louis XV., who were to be suc-
cessively upon the throne of France, were at
Versailles: Louis the Dauphin, now twenty,
and his Austrian bride, Marie Antoinette, and
his two brothers, afterward successively Louis
XVIII. and Charles X. Still another prince-
ling, Louis Philippe, was at the Palais Royal,
son of the Duke of Orleans, late regent, also
destined to wear the French crown ; and last of
all that infant at Ajaccio, in whom the play was
to reach its splendid climax.
,A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 173
In 1744 Louis XV. was stricken with small-
pox, and exchanged the brilliant scenes at Ver-
sailles for the royal vault in the Church of
St. Denis, where he took his place among his
ancestors.
CHAPTER XV.
Louis XV. was dead, and two children, with
the light-heartedness of youth and inexperi-
ence, stepped upon the throne which was to be
a scaffold Louis XVI., only twenty, and
Marie Antoinette, his wife, nineteen. He,
amiable, kind, full of generous intentions ; she,
beautiful, simple, child-like, and lovely. In-
stead of a debauched old king with depraved
surroundings, here were a prince and princess
out of a fairy tale. The air was filled with
Indefinite promise of a new era for mankind to
be inaugurated by this amiable young king,
whose kindness of heart shone forth in his first
speech, " We will have no more loans, no credit,
no fresh burdens on the people ; " then, leaving
his ministers to devise ways of paying the enor-
mous salaries of officials out of an empty treas-
ury, and to arrange the financial details of his
benevolent scheme of government, he proceeded
with his gay and brilliant young wife to
174
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 175
Rheims, there to be crowned with a magnifi-
cence undreamed of by Louis XIV.
In the midst of these rejoicings over the new
reign, and of speculative dreams of universal
freedom, there was wafted across the Atlantic
news of a handful of patriots arrayed against
the tyranny of the British Crown. Here were
the theories of the new philosophy translated
into the reality of actual experience. " No
taxation without representation/' " No privi-
leged class/ 7 " No government without the con-
sent of the governed." Vv'as this not an em-
bodiment of their dreams ? Nor did it detract
from the interest in the conflict that England
England, the hated rival of France was defied
by an indignant people of her own race. There
was not a young noble in the land who would
not have rushed, if he could, to the defence of
the outraged colonies.
The king, half doubting, and vaguely fear-
ing, was swept into the current, and the ar-
mies and the courage of the Americans were
splendidly reinforced by generous, enthusiastic
France.
Why should the simple-hearted Louis see
what no one else seemed to see: that victory
176 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
or failure was alike full of peril for France?
If the colonies were conquered, France would
feel the hostility of England; if they were
freed and self-governing, the principle of mon-
archy had a staggering blow.
In the mean time, as the American Revolu-
tion moved, on toward success, there was talk
in the cabin as well as the chateau of the
" rights of man." In shops and barns, as well
as in clubs and drawling-rooms, there was a
glimmering of the coming day.
" What is true upon one continent is true
upon another," say they. " If it is cowardly
to submit to tyranny in America, what is it in
France ? " " If Englishmen may revolt against
oppression, why may not Frenchmen ? " " No
government without the consent of the gov-
erned ? When has our consent been asked, the
consent of twenty-five million people ? Are we
sheep, that we have let a few thousands gov-
ern us for a thousand years, without our con-
sent?"
Poverty and hunger gave force and urgency
to these questions. The people began to clamor
more boldly for the good time which had been
promised by the kind-hearted king. The mur-
A SHORT BISTORT OF FRANCE. 177
rnur swelled to an ominous roan Thousands
were at his very palace gates, telling him In no
unmistakable terms that they were tired of
smooth words and fair promises. What they
wanted was a new constitution and bread.
Poor Louis ! the one could be made with pen
and paper; but by what miracle could he pro-
duce the other? How gladly would he have
given them anything. But what could he do?
There was not enough money to pay the sal-
aries of his officials, nor for his gay young
queen's fetes and balls! The old way would
have been to Impose new taxes. But how
could he tax a people crying at his gates for
bread? He made more promises which he
could not keep ; yielded, one after another, con-
cessions of authority and dignity; then vacil-
lated, and tried to return over the slippery path,
only to be dragged on again by an Irresistible
fate.
Louis' Minister of Finance, Turgot, was a
trained economist and a man of very great
ability. When Louis assured the people, In the
speech after his coronation, that there were to
be " no more loans, no fresh burdens on the
people/' he did not know how Turgot was
1 78 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
going to accomplish this miracle. He was un-
aware that it was to be done by cutting off the
cherished privileges of the nobility, and that
the proposed reforms were all aimed at the
privileged classes. When this became appar-
ent, indignation was great at Versailles. The
court would not hear of economy. Turgot was
dismissed, and Necker, a Swiss banker (father
of Madame de Stael), called to fill his place.
Necker made another mistake. He took the
people into his confidence, let them know the
sources of revenue, the nature of expenditures,
and measures of relief. This was very quiet-
ing to the public, but exasperating to the privi-
leged classes, who had never taken the people
into their confidence, and considered it an im-
pertinence for them to inquire how the moneys
were spent And so Louis, again yielding to
the pressure at Versailles, dismissed Necker;
then, in the outburst of rage which followed,
tried to retrace his steps and recall him.
But events were moving too swiftly for that
now. In the existing temper of the people,
small reforms and concessions were unavailing.
They were demanding that the States General
be called.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 179
The critical moment had come. If Louis of
his own initiative had summoned that body to
confer over the situation, it would have been
a very different thing; but a call of the States-
General at the demand of the people was a vir-
tual surrender of the very principle of absolu-
tism. The work of Richelieu, Mazarin, and
Louis XIV. would be undone ; for it would in-
volve an acknowledgment of the right of the
people to dictate to the king, and to participate
in the government of the nation. The whole
revolutionary contention was vindicated in this
act.
The call was issued; and when Louis, in
1789. convoked the States General, he made
his last concession to the demands of his sub-
jects.
That almost-forgotten body had not been
seen since Richelieu effaced all the auxiliary
functions of government. Nobles, ecclesiastics,
and Tiers Etat (or commons) found them-
selves face to face once more. The courtly
contemptuous nobles, the princely ecclesiastics
were unchanged, but there was a new expres-
sion In the pale faces of the commons. There
was a look of calm defiance as they met the dis-
l8o A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
dainful gaze of the aristocrats across the gulf
of two centuries.
The two superior bodies absolutely refused
to sit in the same room with the commons.
They might under the same roof, but in the
same room never.
There was an historic precedent for this re-
fusal. The three estates had always acted as
three separate bodies. So the demand in itself
was an encroachment upon the ancient dignity
of the two superior bodies, which they resented.
But they might better have yielded. The Tiers
Etat with dignity and firmness insisted that
they should meet and vote together as one body,
or they would constitute themselves a separate
body, and act independently of the other two.
This was the Rubicon. On one side compro-
mise, and possible co-operation of the three leg-
islative bodies; on the other, revolution, in
charge of the people.
Aristocratic France was offered its last
chance, and committed its last act of arrogance
and folly. The ultimatum was refused by the
nobles and clergy. And the Tiers Etat de-
clared itself the National Assembly, in which
was vested all the legislative authority of the
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 181
kingdom. The people had taken possession of
the Government of France !
The predetermined destruction of the mon-
archy seems evident, when at the most critical
point, and at the moment calling for the most
careful retrenchment and reform, fate had
placed Louis XV., acting like a madman in the
excesses of his profligacy; and, at the next
stage, while the last opportunity still existed by
main force to drag the nation back, and hold it
from going over the brink, there stood the most
excellent, the kindest-hearted but weakest gen-
tleman who ever wore the name of king ! When
the distracted Louis gave the impotent order
for the National Assembly to disperse, and for
the three bodies to assemble and vote separately,
according to ancient custom; and then when
he gave still further proof of childish incom-
petency by telling the Tiers Etat they were
" not to meddle with the privileges of the higher
orders/' kingship had become a mocker}". It
was a child telling the tornado not to come in
that direction.
When the king's herald read to the National
Assembly this foolish message, ending with the
formula, " You hear, gentlemen^ the orders of
i82 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
the king/' Mirabeau sprang to his feet, saying,
" Go, tell your master we are here by the will
of the people, and will be only removed at the
point of the bayonet," the pitiful king then
yielding to this defiance, even begging the no-
bles and deputies of the clergy to join the
National Assembly a revolutionary assembly,
which was holding its meetings in his own Pal-
ace of Versailles, and which was every day
gravitating from its original lofty purpose ; its
rallying cry for justice and reform of abuses
changing to " Down with the Aristocrats ! "
It was becoming alarming, so Louis ordered
the body to disperse ; and when soldiers stood
at the door to prevent its assembling, it took
possession of the queen's tennis court, and there
each member took a solemn oath not to dissolve
until the object they sought had been secured.
There were some among the clergy and the
nobles who realized the necessity for reforms,
and who would gladly have joined a movement
inaugurated in a different spirit. Hence, partly
from alarm, and partly impelled by other rea-
sons and purposes, more or less pure, there was
finally a secession from the two aristocratic
bodies ; the Duke of Orleans, cousin of the king,
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 183
leading the movement in one, and three arch-
bishops in the other. These, with their follow-
ers, appeared among the Tiers Etat as converts
to the popular cause, the Marquis de Lafayette,
hero of the late American War, sitting next to
Mirabeau, the powerful and eloquent leader of
the whole movement in its first days.
Concerning the genius of Mirabeau there is
no difference of opinion. AH are agreed that
intellectually he towered far above every* one
about him. But whether he was the incarna-
tion of good or of evil, the world is still in
doubt ; and also whether he could have guided
the forces he had invoked, if a premature death
had not swept him off from the scene, leaving
Robespierre, a man concerning whom there is
no disagreement of opinion, to guide the storm.
Paris was becoming wild with excitement.
Clubs and associations were in every quarter,
and detachments of a Parisian mob marched
and sang at night, firing the hearts of the rab-
ble. But it was the Palais Royal, the home of
the Duke of Orleans, that friend of the people,
which was the heart of the whole movement.
There, patriots and lovers of France, their
hearts aflame with noble aspiration for their
1 84 A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE.
country, met with schemers without heart,
more or less wicked, the Camille Desmoulins
and the Marats all fused into one body under
the leadership of the Duke of Orleans, cousin
of the king, who, rising superior to aristocratic
traditions, believed in Equality, and was the
man of the people Philippe Egalite! His
young son Louis Philippe perhaps listened with
wonder to the sounds of strange revelry and
the wild shouts which greeted the eloquence of
Camille Desmoulins and of Marat.
At last a rumor reached the Palais Royal,
and from there ran through the streets like an
electric current, that the king's soldiers were
marching upon the Assembly to disperse it.
Mad with wine and excitement, a common im-
pulse seized the entire populace, to destroy the
Bastille, that old stronghold of despotism, that
symbol of royal tyranny. This prison- fortress,
with its eight great round towers, and moat
eighty-three feet wide, had stood since 1371,
and represented more tragic human experi-
ences than any structure in France. In an
hour the doors were burst open, and before the
sun went down the heads of the governor and
his officials were being carried on pikes through
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE, 185
the streets of Paris. The horrible drama had
opened. The tiger in the slums had tasted
blood, and would want it again.
Thus far it was only an insurgent mob, com-
mitting violence, and the National Assembly at
once created a body of militia, under the direc-
tion of Lafayette, for the protection of Paris.
When the news of the fall of the Bastille
reached Versailles, the king, still failing to real-
ize the gravity of the situation, exclaimed,
" Then it is a revolt ! " " Sire," said the Duke
de Liancourt, " it is a Revolution ! "
The king found himself deserted. His ter-
rified nobles almost in a body were fleeing from
the kingdom. Bewildered, not knowing what
to do, or what not to do, and desiring to assure
the people that he was their friend, he appeared
before the National Assembly and made the last
sacrifice accepted the Tricolor; adopted the
livery of the revolutionary party ! The act was
received with immense enthusiasm, and the out-
look became more reassuring.
Then the garrison at the palace was re-
enforced by a regiment from the country, and
a dinner was given to welcome the new officers.
The king and queen were urged to enter the
186 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
room for a few moments, simply as an act of
courtesy. Marie Antoinette most reluctantly
consented to pass through the banqueting-hall.
The officers, when they saw the beautiful
daughter of Maria Theresa, sprang to their
feet, and, flushed with wine, and in a transport
of enthusiasm, committed a fatal act. Throw-
ing their tricolors under the table, they drank
to the toast, " The king forever! "
When this was reported In Paris the storm
burst anew. A thousand terrible women, led
by one still more terrible than the rest, started
for Versailles. This crowd of base and de-
graded beings, re-enforced on the way by all
that is worst, arrived at the palace, and the
howling mob encamped ontslde in the rain all
night. Entrance at last was found by someone^
and they were Inside and at the queen's door;
she barely escaping by a hidden passageway
leading to the king's room.
" The king to Paris! " was the cry; and in
the morning the wretched Louis appeared upon
the balcony and Indicated his willingness to go
to Paris as they desired. And then the queen,
hoping to touch their hearts, also appeared
upon the balcony, holding in her arms the
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 187
dauphin, with the tricolor on his breast. And
with this horrible escort they did go back to
Paris, leaving Versailles forever, and were vir-
tually prisoners at the Tuileries.
The position of Lafayette at this time is a
singular one: an agent of the National As-
sembly, protecting the king from the Jacobins,
and saying to Robespierre and Marat, " If you
kill the king to-day, I will place the dauphin
on the throne to-morrow. 37
But the currents of a cataract nearing the
fall are difficult to guide. Three parties were
forming in the Xational Assembly : the Giron-
dists, the part}' of genius and eloquence and of
moderation; the Jacobins, the party of the ex-
tremists and radicals : and a third party, unde-
cided, waiting to see what was safest and
best.
All that was noble and true and fine in the
French Revolution was in the party oi the
Girondists. Dreamers, idealists, their dream
was of a republic like the one in America, and
their ideal an impossible perfection of condi-
tion in which human reason was supreme.
The excesses of the Revolution they did not ap-
prove, but were willing to sacrifice the king
i88 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
and even the royal family, if necessary. They
did not realize the forces with which they were
airily playing, nor that the time was at hand
w T hen the Girondists would vainly strive to re-
strain the horrible excesses ; that, after they had
sacrificed the royal family, the Jacobins would
sacrifice them; the slayers would be slain!
Lafayette, neither a Girondist nor a Jacobin,
was a loyal Frenchman and patriot, with the
American ideal in his heart, vainly trying to
mediate between a feeble king and a people
who had lost their reason. The time was near
when he would give up the hopeless task and
flee to escape being himself engulfed.
A wretchedly planned attempt at the escape
of the royal family aggravated the situation.
They were recognized at Varennes, brought
back with great indignity, and placed under
closer surveillance than before. On the loth
of August, 1792, the mob attacked the Tuile-
ries. The royal family fled to the National
Assembly for protection, while their Swiss
guards vainly defended the palace with their
lives.
This was the end of the monarchy. Louis,
the brave queen and her children, and Princess
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 189
Elizabeth, sister of the king, were removed
from the Assembly to the prison in " The
Temple/' and the National Convention for-
mally declared France a republic.
The grim prison to which they were taken,
with its central square tower flanked by four
round towers, had stood since the time of
Philip Augustus. It was built for the Knights
Templar, and was chateau, fortress, prison, all
In one, and was the home of the grand master
and those others who were burned when Philip
IV. ruthlessly destroyed the order. The cen-
tral tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, had
four stories. The king and the dauphin were
Imprisoned In the second story, and the queen,
her young daughter, and the Princess Elizabeth
in the story above.
The power swiftly passed from Girondists to
Jacobins, and a Revolutionary Tribunal was
created in charge of the terrible triumvirate
Robespierre, Marat, and Danton.
An awful travesty upon a court of justice
was established In that historic hall In the
Palais de Justice. Its walls, which had looked
down upon generations of Merovingian, Carlo-
vingian, and Capetian. kings, now beheld the
190 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
condemnation of the most innocent and well-
intentioned of all the kings of France.
The king was arraigned at this court upon
the charge of treason, convicted, and con-
demned to die on the 2ist of January, 1793. He
was allowed to embrace for the last time his
adored wife and children. At the scaffold he
tried to speak a last word to his people. The
drums were ordered to drown his voice, and
an attendant priest uttered the words, " Fils
de Saint Louis, monies au del! " Son of
Saint Louis, ascend to heaven! and all was
over. The kindest-hearted, most inoffensive
gentleman in Europe had expiated the crimes
of his ancestors.
More and more furious swept the torrent,
gathering to itself all that was vile and outcast.
Where were the pale-faced, determined patriots
who sat in the National Assembly ? Some of
them riding with dukes and marquises to the
guillotine. Was this the equality they ex-
pected when they cried, "Down with the
Aristocrats " ?
Did they think they could guide the whirl-
wind after raising it ? As well whisper to the
cyclone to level only the tall trees, or to the
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRAXCE. 191
conflagration to burn only the temples and
palaces.
With restraining agencies removed, religion,
government, king, all swept away, that hideous
brood bom of vice, poverty, hatred, and despair
came out from dark hiding-places; and what
had commenced as a patriotic revolt had become
a wild orgy of bloodthirsty demons, led by
three master-demons, Robespierre, Marat, and
Danton, vying with each other in ferocity.
Then we see that simple girl thinking by one
supreme act of heroism and sacrifice, like Joan
of Arc, to save her country. Foolish child!
Did she think to slay the monster devouring
Paris by cutting off one of his heads? The
death of Marat only added to the fury of the
tempest; and the falling of Charlotte Corday's
head was not more noticed than the falling of
a leaf in the forest.
The slaughter of the people had been reduced
to an admirable system. The public prosecu-
tor, Fouquier-Tinville, went every day to the
" Committee of Public Safety JJ to procure the
list of the proscribed, who were immediately
placed in the Conciergerie to await trial. This
list was then submitted to Robespierre, who
192 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
with his pencil marked the names of those who
would be executed on the morrow.
The mockery of the trial of Charlotte Cor-
day was not delayed. This girl belonged to a
family of the smaller nobility. In her secluded
life in the country, a mind of superior quality
had fed upon the new philosophy of the period.
An enthusiasm for liberty, and a horror of
tyranny, had taken possession of her. In pas-
sionate sympathy with the early purposes of the
Revolution, Marat seemed to her a monster, the
incarnation of the spirit which would defeat
the cause of Liberty. It was believed that his
list of the proscribed was not confined to Paris,
but that the names of thousands of victims all
over France were already designated. In that
extraor dinary scene at her trial, when ques-
tioned, she impatiently said, " Yes, yes, I killed
him. I killed one man to save a hundred
thousand ! "
Nothing w r as lacking to make this, with one
exception, the most dramatic incident of the
Revolution. Her eloquent address to the
French people, found pinned to the waist of
her dress after her execution, and her splendid
courage to the end, rounds out the picturesque
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 193
story of her useless martyrdom. A Girondist
waiting- in the Conciergerie, when he heard of
her crime and end, exclaimed : " It will kill us !
But she has taught us how to die! "
The end did not come so swiftly for the
queen, who., after being removed from the
Temple, spent seventy-two days and nights in
the dark cell in that abode of horrors, the Con-
ciergerie. Then came the trial, the inquisitorial
trial, lasting all through the night in the gloom
of that dimly lighted hall. And at half-past
four in the morning she heard without a tremor
the terrible words, " Marie Antoinette, widow
of Louis Capet, the Tribunal condemns yon to
die/' Not for a moment did this intrepid
woman quail ; and a small detail brings before
us vividly her wonderful calmness. As she
reached the stairs in her pitiful return to her
cell, she said simply to the lieutenant of the
gendarmes, who was at her side, " Monsieur, I
can scarcely see (Je z'ois a peine) ; will you lead
me?"
In another half hour the drums were beating
in every quarter in preparation for the event;
and at ten o'clock she started upon her last ride.
And how bravely she met her awful fate ! We
194 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
forget her follies, her reckless extravagances,
in admiration for her courage as she rides to
her death, with hands tied behind her, sitting
in that hideous tumbril, head erect, pale, proud,
defiant, as if upon a throne (October 16, 1793).
The search-light of scrutiny has been turned
upon this unfortunate woman for more than a
century, and all that has been discovered is that
she was pleasure-loving, indiscreet, and abso-
lutely ignorant of the gravity of her responsi-
bility in the position she occupied.
In the days of her power and splendor she
lived as the average woman of her period would
have done under the same circumstances not
better, and not worse. But when the time
came to try her soul and test her mettle, she
evinced a strength and dignity and composure
surpassing belief.
If there had been any evidence of the truth
of the story of the diamond necklace a story
which no doubt hastened the revolutionary
crisis it would certainly have been used at her
trial; but it was not. It wall be remembered
that this necklace was one of the fatal legacies
from the reign of Louis XV., who had ordered
for du Barry this gift which was to cost a sum
A SHORT &ISTOS1* OF FRA2\C. 195
krge enough for a king's ransom. The king
died before it was completed, and the story
became current that Marie Antoinette, the
hated Austrian woman who was ruining France
by her extravagance, was negotiating for the
purchase of this necklace while the people were
starving !
A network of villainy is woven about the
whole incident in which the names of a car-
dinal and ladies high in rank are involved.
The mystery may never be uncovered, but every
effort to connect the queen's name with this
historic scandal has failed.
Probably of all the cruelties inlicted upon
this unhappy woman, none caused her such
anguish as the testimony of her son before the
Revolutionary Tribunal, that he had heard his
mother say she " hated the French people."
Placed under the care of the brutal Simon after
his father's removal from the Temple, the child
had become a physical and mental wreck. The
queen, in her last letter to her sister the Prin-
cess Elizabeth, makes pitiful allusion to the in-
cident, begging her to remember what lie must
have suffered before he said this ; also remind-
ing her how children may be taught to utter
196 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
words they do not comprehend. His lesson,
no doubt, had been learned by cruel tortures;
and, rendered half imbecile, it was recited when
the time came. None but his keeper was ever
permitted to see the boy. His condition, final
illness, and death are shrouded in mystery.
In June, 1794, eight months after his mother's
execution, it was announced that he was dead.
It would be difficult to prove this event before
a court of justice. There were no witnesses
whose testimony would have any weight. No
one was permitted to see the child who was put
into that obscure grave; and many circum-
stances give rise to a suspicion that the boy,
who might have been a source of political em-
barrassment in the rehabilitation of France, was
disposed of in another way dropped into an
obscurity which would serve as well as death.
There was a surfeit of killing, and a waning
Revolution. We are far from saying that such
a thing happened. But ambitious royalists
might have thought their money well expended
in removing the son of the murdered king from
the scene. The claim of the American dau-
phin, Eleazer Williams, may have been fanciful,
or even false; but what safer and more effect-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRAXCE. 197
tial plan could be devised than to drop the half-
Imbecile heir to a throne Into the heart of a
tribe of Indians In an American wilderness ?
When Louis XVIII. occupied his brother's
throne, in 1814, and erected over the dishon-
ored graves of his family that beautiful Cha-
pelle Expiatoire, he also gave orders for masses
to be said for the repose of the souls of his mur-
dered kindred, whom he designated by name:
Louis XVI., king; Marie Antoinette, queen,
and the Princess Elizabeth, his sister. If It Is
true, as has been said, that the name of the dau-
phin was not Included In this list, It Is a most
suggestive omission. Technically, this boy
was king from the moment of his father's
death until his own, and on the lists of sov-
ereigns is called Louis XVII. Then why was
there no mention of him as one of that mar-
tyred group?
Twenty-two of the Girondists who had
helped to dethrone the king on that loth of
August, and later consented to his death, were
now facing the same doom to which they had
sent him only six months before, and by a
strange fatality were under the same roof with
the queen. Only a few feet, and two thin par-
198 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
titions, separated them ; and in her cell she must
have heard their impassioned voices during
that dramatic banquet, the last night of their
lives. And the next day this group of extraor-
dinary men men singularly gifted and fas-
cinating were all lying in one tomb, at the
side of Louis XVI.
Philip Egalite, the Duke of Orleans, was to
meet his Nemesis also. Brought a prisoner to
that grim resting-place, he occupied the adjoin-
ing cell to that which had been the qtieen's, and,
it is said, had assigned to him the wretched cot
she no longer needed. His desperate game had
failed. No elevation would come to him out
of the chaos of crime, and the reward for
scheming and voting for the death of his cousin,
the king, would be a scaffold, not a throne.
His name had been upon the list of the pro-
scribed for some time ; but the end was precipi-
tated by an act of his young son, Louis Philippe,
then Duke de Chartres, and aide-de-camp to
Dumouriez, who was defending the frontier
from an invasion of Austrian troops. After
the execution of the queen, Dumouriez refused
longer to defend France from an invasion the
purpose of which was to make such horrors im-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 199
possible. He laid down his command, and,
with his aide, Louis Philippe, joined the colony
of exiles in Belgium, while the Austrian troops
were in full march upon Paris from Verdun.
This was treason whether justifiable or not
this is not the place to discuss.
Philip Egalite knew that he no longer had the
confidence of the leaders, and that they also
knew r that he was an aristocrat in disguise.
So when this defection of Dumouriez came,
and was shared by his own son, he tried to get
out of the country. He was arrested at Mar-
seilles, brought to the Conciergerie, that half-
way house to the scaffold, and was soon follow-
ing in the footsteps of his king and queen,
through the Rue St. Honore, passing his own
Palais Royal on his way to the Place de la
Revolution.
The Revolution, beginning with a patriotic
assembly, in a measure sane, had made a rapid
descent, first falling apart into Girondist and
Jacobin, moderate and extremist, the Giron-
dist with a shudder consenting to the execution
of the king. Then, the power passing to a so-
called " Committee of Public Safety " and a
Triumvirate, in order to sweep away the ob-
200 .4 SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE
structive Girondist ; and then an untrammelled 1
Terror, in the hands of three, and, finally, one.
Such had been its mad course. But with the
death of the king and queen the madness had
reached its height, and a revulsion of feeling
set in. There was a surfeit of blood, and an
awakening sense of horror, which turned upon
the instigators. Danton fell, and finally, when
amid cries of " Death to the tyrant! " Robes-
pierre was dragged wounded and shivering to
the fate he had brought upon so many thou-
sands, the drama which had opened at the
Bastille was fittingly closed.
The great battle for human liberty had been
fought and w r on. Religious freedom and po-
litical freedom were identical in principle. The
right of the human conscience, proclaimed by
Luther in 1517, had in 1793 only expanded
into the large conception of all the inherent
rights of the individual.
It had taken centuries for English persist-
ence to accomplish what France, with such ap-
palling violence, had done in as many years.
It had been a furious outburst of pent-up force ;
but the work had been thorough. Not a germ
of tyranny remained. The incrustations of a
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 2or
thousand years were not alone broken, but pul-
verized ; the privileged classes were swept away,
and their vast estates, two-thirds of the terri-
tory of France, ready to be distributed among
the rightful owners of the soil, those who by
toil and industry could win them. France was
as new as if she had no history 7 . There was
ample opportunity for her people now. What
would they do with It ?
What would they build upon the ruins of
their ancient despotism? What would be the
starting-point for such a task every connect-
ing link with an historic past broken, and the
armies of an indignant Europe pressing in upon
every side ? Could they ever wipe out the stain
which had made them odious in the sight of
Christendom? Would they ever be forgiven
for disgracing the name of Liberty?
It was the power and genius of a single man
which was going to make the world forget her
disgrace, and cover France with a mantle more
glorious than she had ever worn.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Revolution over, France, sitting among
the wreckage of the past, found herself dis-
graced, discredited, and at war with all of
Europe. Austria, naturally the leader in an
effort to stop the atrocities which threatened a
daughter of her own royal house, had been
joined finally by England, Holland, Spain, and
even Portugal and Tuscany, these all being im-
pelled, not by the personal feeling which actu-
ated Austria, but by alarm for their own safety.
This revolutionary movement was a moral and
political plague spot which must be stamped
out, or there would be anarchy in every king-
dom in Europe.
It was the difficulty in recruiting troops to
fight this coalition which had embarrassed and
finally broken the power of the revolutionary
government. If the states of Europe had
really acted in concert, the life of the new re-
public would have been brief. But Austria
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 203
was jealous of Prussia, and Prussia afraid o
the friendship which was forming between
Austria and England, and Catharine, the em-
press of Russia, keeping all uncertain about her
designs upon Poland with the result that the
war upon France \vas conducted in a desultory
and ineffectual manner.
In the organization of the new French repub-
lic, the executive power was vested in a Direc-
tory, composed of five members, chosen by two
houses of legislature.
A disagreement over some details of the new
constitution led to a heated quarrel, and this
to an insurrection in Paris, October 5, 1795,
which Napoleon Bonaparte, a young officer
who had acquired distinction at Toulon, was
summoned to quell. The vigor and the success
with w r hich the young leader used his cannon
in the streets of Paris struck precisely the right
note at the right moment. Law and order w r ere
established. A delighted Directory yielded at
once to the suggestion of a campaign against
Austria which should be conducted in Italy, In
combination with an advance upon Vienna
from the Rhine.
With the instinct of genius, Napoleon Bona-
204 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
parte saw the path to power. The air was
vibrating with the word Liberty. If he would
capture France which w r as what he intended
to do he must move along the line of political
freedom. The note to be struck was the lib-
eration of the oppressed. Where would he
find chains more galling, more unnatural, than
in Italy, held by the iron hand of Austria?
And was not Austria the leader of the coalition
against France?
Without money or supplies, and with an un-
clothed army, he obeyed the inspiration, auda-
ciously planning to make the invaded country
pay the expenses of the war waged against it.
Pointing to the Italian cities, he said to his
soldiers : " There is your reward. It is rich
and ample, but you must conquer it ! " Like
Caesar, he knew how, in words brief and con-
cise, to address his followers, and to inspire en-
thusiasm as few have ever done before or since.
He also knew how to confound the enemy with
new and unexpected methods which made un-
availing all which military science and experi-
ence had taught them.
With the suddenness of a tornado he swept
down upon the plains of Lombardy. The bat-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 20$
ties of Lodi, Arcola, Rivoli, were won, and in
ten months Napoleon was master of Italy. By
the treaty of Campo Foraiio, October 17, 1797,
northern Italy was divided into four republics,
with their capitals respectively at Milan, Genoa,
Bologna, and Rome. And in return for her
acquiescence in this redistribution of her Ital-
ian territory, Austria received Venice. After
fourteen centuries of independence, Venetia, the
queen of the Adriatic, was in chains !
Not satisfied with this, Napoleon intended
that Paris should wear the jewels which had
adorned the fair Italian cities. The people
whose chains he had come to break were at
once required to surrender money, jewels, plate,
horses, equipments, besides their choicest art
collections and rarest manuscripts. In a pri-
vate letter to a member of the Directory he
wrote : " I shall send } T OU twenty pictures by
some of the first masters, including Correggio
and Michael Angelo." A later letter said:
" Join all these to what will be sent from Rome,
and we shall have all that is beautiful in Italy,
except a small number of objects in Turin and
Naples." Pius VI. , without a protest, surren-
dered his millions of francs, and ancient
206 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCK
bronzes, costly pictures, and priceless manu-
scripts.
Austria had lost fourteen battles, and all her
Italian possessions were grouped together into
a Cisalpine republic ! Another Helvetic repub-
lic was set up in Switzerland, and still another
republic created in Holland under a French
protectorate.
In other words, this man had accomplished
in Italy precisely what he was going to accom-
plish later in Germany. He had broken down
the lingering traces of medisevalism, and pre-
pared the soil for a new order of things.
The peace of Campo Formio was the most
glorious ever made for France. The river
Rhine was at last recognized as her frontier,
thus placing Belgium within the lines of the
republic. Napoleon had captured not alone
Italy, but France herself? What might she
not accomplish with such a leader? The
delighted Directory discussed the invasion of
England. Napoleon, knowing this would be
premature, dramatically conceived the idea of
crippling England by threatening her Asiatic
possessions, and led an army into Egypt
(1798). Although Nelson destroyed his fleet,
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 207
he still maintained the arrogance of a con-
queror.
No king, no military leader, had brought as
much glory to France. Du Guesclin, Turenne,
Conde, all were eclipsed. And so were Marl-
borough and Prince Eugene. What would not
France do at the bidding of this magician, \vho
by a single sweep of his w r and had raised her
from the dust of humiliation and made her the
leading power on the Continent !
The young officer, now so distinguished, had
married in the early part of his career the widow
of M. de Beauharnais, one of the victims of '
the Reign of Terror. During his absence in
Egypt, the Directorate, and the Legislature, and
the people had all become embroiled in dis-
sensions. Things were falling again into
chaos, w T ith no hand to hold them together.
Discontent was rife, and men were asking why
the one man, the little dark man who knew how
to do and to compel things, and to maintain
discipline, why he w r as sent to the Nile and the
Pyramids !
Josephine, from Paris, kept Napoleon in-
formed of these conditions. So, leaving his
army in charge of Kleber, he unexpectedly re-
208 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
turned. He knew what he was going to do ;
and he also knew he could depend upon the
army to sustain him. By political moves as
adroit and unexpected as his tactics on the field,
the Directorate was swept out of existence, and
Napoleon was first consul of France.
It was a long step backward. The pendu-
lum was returning once more toward a strong
executive, and to centralization. From this
moment, until he was a prisoner in the hands
of the English, Napoleon Bonaparte was sole
master of France.
The early simplicity of the republic was dis-
appearing. The receptions of the first consul
at the Tuileries began to recall the days at Ver-
sailles. Josephine, fascinating, and perfect in
the art of dress, knew well how to maintain the
splendor of her new court; as also did Bona-
parte's sisters, with their beauty and their brill-
iant talents. But outside of France, and across
the channel, the consul was only a usurper, and
Louis XVIII. was king an uncrowned but
legitimate sovereign!
Perhaps it is not too much to say that noth-
ing in Napoleon's career has left such enduring
traces, and so permanently influenced civiliza-
.4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 209
tion, as two acts performed at this period : the
creation of that monumental work of genius the
codification of the laws of France and the sale
of Louisiana to the United States. Spain had
ceded this large territory to France in 1763, and
Bonaparte realizing that he was not in a posi-
tion to hold it now, if attacked, sold it to the
United States (1803), in order to keep it out
of the hands of England.
The goal to which things were tending w r as
realized by some. A conspiracy against the
life of the consul was discovered. Napoleon
suspected it to have originated with the Bour-
bons ; and the death of the young Duke d'En-
ghien, a son of the Prince of Conde, without
pity or justice, w^as intended to strike with ter-
ror all who were plotting for his down! all. The
swiftness with w y hich it was done, the darkness
under the walls of Vincennes, the lantern on
the breast of the victim, and the file of soldiers
at midnight, all conspired to warn conspirators
of the fate awaiting them. It was the criti-
cal moment at hand which turned Bonaparte's
heart to steel.
Only a fe\v days after this tragedy at Vin-
cennes a proposition was made in the Tribunate
210 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
to bestow upon the first consul the title of
hereditary Emperor of the French !
This new Charlemagne did not go to the pope
to be crowned, as that other had done in the
year 800 ; but at his bidding the pope came to
him. And when on the 2d of December, 1804,
the crown of France was placed upon his head,
the great drama commenced in 1789 had ended.
Rivers of blood had flowed to free her from
despotism, and France was held by a power
more despotic than that of Richelieu or of
Louis XIV.
At war with all of Europe, Napoleon swiftly
unfolded his great plan not only to conquer, but
to demolish not one state, but all. He was
going to create an empire out of a federation of
European kingdoms all held in his own hand,
and to tear in pieces the old map of Europe,
precisely as he had the map of Italy. He was
going to break down the old historic divisions
and landmarks, and create new, as he had cre-
ated a kingdom of Italy out of Italian repub-
lics. So, while he w r as fighting a combined
Europe, Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Saxony
had become kingdoms, and the West German
States, seventeen in number, were all merged
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 2x1
in a Confederation of the Rhine, " the Rhein-
bund," under a French Protectorate,
Then Austria felt the weight of his hand.
Francis Joseph wore the double crown created
by Charlemagne a thousand years before, and
was Emperor of Rome as well as of Germany.
It had become an empty title; but it was the
sacred tradition of a Holy Roman Empire, the
empire which had dominated the world during
the Middle Ages, and while Europe was com-
ing into form. Napoleon was ploughing deep
into the soil of the past when he told Francis
Joseph he must drop the title of Emperor of
Rome ! And it is a startling indication of his
power that the emperor unresistingly obeyed;
the logical meaning, of course, being that he,
already King of Italy, was the successor to
Charlemagne and the head of a new Roman
Empire.
England, never having felt the touch of this
insolent conqueror upon her own soil, was still
the bitterest of all in the coalition, and was more
indignant over the humiliation of Germany
than she seemed to be herself. Prussia, at last
reluctantly opposing him, was defeated at Jena,
1806, a time during which the beautiful Queen
212 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Louise was the heroine, and the one brave
enough to defy him ; and then the peace of Til-
sit, 1807, completed the humiliation of the king-
dom created by the great elector.
It would seem that the people as well as
the armies of Germany were captured by this
man, when we hear that ninety German authors
dedicated their books to him, a servile press
praised him, and one of Beethoven's greatest
sonatas was inspired by him. But a man so
colossal and dazzling could only ^ accurately
measured at a distance. Even yet we are too
near to him for that, and the world has not
yet come to an agreement concerning him, any
more than as to the true analysis of the char-
acter of Hamlet.
There was now scarcely an uncrowned head
in Napoleon's family. His brother Louis, who
had married his step-daughter, Hortense Beau-
harnais, was king of Holland. His brother-
in-law Murat he made king of Naples ; Eugene
Beauharnais, his step-son, viceroy of Italy ; his
brother Jerome, King of Westphalia ; and then
his brother Joseph was placed upon the throne
of Spain, from which an indignant people drove
him ingloriously away.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 213
In an hour's interview with Alexander, Em-
peror of Russia, Napoleon had by the magic of
superiority secured that emperor's friendship
and co-operation in his plans against England.
All this excellent man was fighting for was the
peace of Europe! And he disclosed to Alex-
ander his plan that they two should be the eter-
nal custodians of that peace; which was to be
secured by restraining the arrogance of Eng-
land, and that was to be done by ruining the
commercial prosperity of that nation of shop-
keepers. There was to be organized a conti-
nental blockade against England. Europe was
to be forbidden to trade with that country.
A plan was forming in the mind of Napo-
leon which was destined as the turning-point
in his astonishing career. It was of vast im-
portance to him that he should have an heir to
the great inheritance he was creating. By
repudiating Josephine, and marrying the daugh-
ter of Francis Joseph, there might be an heir
who would also be the legitimate descendant of
the Caesars ; thus immensely fortifying the em-
pire after his ow y n death.
When this thought took possession of his
mind, the psychological moment had arrived..
214 A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE.
The tide had turned toward disaster. The
marriage with Maria Louisa took place at Paris
in 1810. The marriage of Napoleon with a
Hapsburg was not pleasing to the French peo-
ple, who took pride in the simple origin of
their emperor and empress. This hero of Ma-
rengo, and Austerlitz, and Jena, and Wagram,
the man before whom Europe trembled, was he
not, after all, only a crowned citizen? And
was this not a triumph for the revolutionary
principle which offset the existence of an em-
pire, as its final result?
Alexander had broken away from his agree-
ment and his friendship with the emperor, and
had joined the allies. So in 1812 the long-
contemplated invasion of Russia began. Of
the 678,000 souls recruited chiefly from con-
quered states, only 80,000 would ever return.
Never before had Napoleon fought the ele-
ments, and never before met overwhelming de-
feat ! The flames at Moscow, followed by the
arctic cold, converted the campaign into a vast
tragedy.
With indomitable courage another grand
army had filled the vacant places, and was put-
ting down a great uprising in Germany. But
A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE. 215
his star was waning. An overwhelming de-
feat at Leipsic was followed by a march upon
Paris. And in the spring of 1814, Alexander,
the young" Russian emperor, the friend who was
to aid him in securing an eternal peace for
Europe, was dictating the terms of surrender
in Paris.
Within a week Napoleon had abdicated.
The title of emperor he was permitted to re-
tain, buC the empire which he was to leave to
the infant son of Maria Louisa, now two years
old, had shrunk to the little island of Elba, on
the west coast of Italy !
CHAPTER XVII.
THE allied powers named Louis XVIII., the
brother of Louis XVI., for the vacant throne,
who promised the people to reign under a con-
stitutional government.
The man who had deserted his brother in
his extremity, a man who represented nothing
not loyalty to the past, nor sympathy with a
single aspiration of the present was king.
As he passed under triumphal arches on the
way to the Tuileries, there was sitting beside
him a sad, pale-faced woman; this was the
Duchesse d'Angouleme, the daughter of Louis
XVI., the little girl who was prisoner in the
Temple twenty years before. What must she
have felt and thought as she passed the very
spot where had stood the scaffold in 1793 !
Almost the first act of Louis XVIII. was the
removal of the mutilated remains of the king
and queen and his sister Elizabeth to the royal
vault in the Church of St. Denis. He then
216
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 217
gave orders for a Chapelle Expiatoire to be
erected over the grave where they had been
lying for two decades, and for masses to be
said for the repose of the souls of his murdered
relatives. Paris was full of returning royal-
ists. Banished exiles with grand old names,
who had been earning a scanty living by teach-
ing French and dancing in Vienna, London,
and even in New York, were hastening to Paris
for a joyful Restoration; and Louis XVIII.,
while Russian and Austrian troops guarded
him on the streets of his own capital, was freely
talking about ruling by divine right!
That king was reigning under a liberal char-
ter (as the new constitution was called) a
charter which guaranteed almost as much per-
sonal liberty as the one obtained in England
from King John in 1215 ; and the palpable ab-
surdity of supposing that he and his supporters
might at the same time revive and maintain
Bourbon traditions, as if there had been no
Revolution, was at least not an indication of
much sagacity.
But there was a very smooth surface. The
tricolor had disappeared. Napoleon's gen-
erals had gone unresistingly over to the Bour-
2i8 A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE.
bons. Talleyrand adapted himself as quickly
to the new regime as he had to the Napoleonic ;
was witty at the expense of the empire and the
emperor, who, as he said, " was not even a
Frenchman " ; and was as crafty and as useful
an instrument for the new ruler as he had been
for the pre-existing one.
But something was happening under the sur-
face. While the plenipotentiaries were busy
over their task of restoring boundaries in
Europe, and the other restoration was going
on pleasantly in Paris, a rumor came that Na-
poleon was in Lyons. A regiment was at once
despatched to drive him back; and Marshal
Ney, " the bravest of the brave/ 3 was sent with
orders to arrest him.
The next news that came to Paris was that
the troops were frantically shouting e Vive
Fempereur! " and Ney was embracing his be-
loved commander and pledging his sword in his
service.
At midnight the king left the Tuileries for
the Flemish frontier, and before the dawn Na-
poleon was in his Palace of Fontainebleau
(March 2Oth), which he had left exactly eleven
months before. The night after the departure
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 219
of the king there suddenly appeared lights pass-
ing swiftly over the Pont de la Concorde; then
came the tramp of horses' feet, and a carriage
attended on each side by cavalry with drawn
swords. The carriage stopped at the first en-
trance to the garden of the Tuileries, and a
small man with a dark, determined face was
borne into the palace the Bourbon had just
deserted.
There was consternation in the Council
Chamber in London when the Duke of Wel-
lington entered and announced that Napoleon
was in Paris, and all must be done over again !
Immediate preparations were made for a
renewal of the war. It was easy to find men
to fight the emperor's battles. All France was
at his feet.
The decisive moment was at hand. Napo-
leon had crossed into the Netherlands, and
Wellington was waiting to meet him.
The struggle at Waterloo had lasted many
hours. The result, so big with fate, was trem-
bling in the balance, when suddenly the boom-
ing of Prussian guns was heard, and Welling-
ton was re-enforced by Bliicher. This was the
end. The French were defeated (June 18,
220 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
1815). Napoleon was in the hands of the
English, and was to be carried a life-prisoner
to the island of St. Helena.
Louis XVIIL, who had been waiting at
Ghent, immediately returned to the Tuileries,
and to his foolish task of posing as a liberal
king to his people, and as a reactionary one to
his royalist adherents. The country was full
of disappointed, imbittered imperialists, and of
angry and revengeful royalists. The Cham-
ber of Peers immediately issued a decree for the
perpetual banishment of the family of Bona-
parte from French soil ; the extremists demand-
ing that the families of the men who had con-
sented to the death of Louis XVI. be included
in .the decree. Sentence of death was passed
upon Marshal Ney, as a traitor to France.
Some might have said that a greater traitor
was at the Tuileries ; but the most picturesque
in that heroic group of Napoleon's marshals
was shot to death.
There was, in fact, a determined purpose to
undo all the work of the Revolution ; to restore
the supremacy and the property of the Church,
and the power of the nobility. In the mean-
time, the people, perfectly aware that the re-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 221
turned exiles were impoverished, were paying
taxes to maintain foreign troops which were
in France for the sole purpose of enabling the
king's government to accomplish these things 1
Here was material enough for discord in a
troubled reign which lasted nine years. Louis
XVIII. died September 16, 1824; and the
Count of Artois, the brother of two kings, was
proclaimed Charles X. of France.
If there had been any doubt about the real
sentiments of Louis XVIII., it must have been
dispelled by the last act of his reign, when, at
the bidding of the Holy Alliance, he sent
French soldiers to put down the Spanish lib-
erals in their fight for a constitution.
But Charles X. did not intend to assume the
thin mask worn by his brother. He had
marked out a different course. All disguise
was to be thrown aside in a Bourbon reign of
the ante-revolutionary sort. The press was
strictly censored, the charter altered, the law
of primogeniture restored; and when saluted
on the streets of Paris by cries of " Give us
back our charter ! " the answer made to his
people by this infatuated man was, " I am here
to receive homage, not counsel/'
222 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
One wonders that a brother of Louis XVI.,
one who had been a fugitive from a Paris mob
in 1789 if he had a memory dared to exas-
perate the people of France.
On the 29th of July a revolt had become a
Revolution, and once more the Marquis de
Lafayette was in charge of the municipal troops,
which assembled at St. Cloud and other defen-
sive points.
In vain did Charles protest that he would
revoke every offensive ordinance, and restore
the charter. It was too late.
Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was ap-
pointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
When he appeared at the Hotel de Ville
wearing the tricolor, his future was already
assured.
There was only one thing left now for
Charles to do : he formally abdicated, and signed
the paper authorizing the appointment of his
cousin to the position of lieutenant-general;
and ten days later, Louis Philippe, son of
Philippe Egalite, occupied the throne he left.
The note struck by this new king was the
absolute surrender of the principle of divine
right He was a "citizen king"; his title
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 22$
being bestowed not by a divine hand, but by
the people, whose voice was the voice of God !
The title itself bore .witness to a new order
of things. Louis Philippe was not King of
France, but " King of the French." King of
France carried with it the old feudal idea of
proprietorship and sovereignty; while a King
of the French was merely a leader of the people,
not the owner of their soil. The charter and
all existing conditions were modified to con-
form to this ideal, and on the Qth of August the
reign of the constitutional king began.
It was the middle class in France which sup-
ported this reign; the class below that would
never forget that he was, after all, a Bourbon
and a king ; while the two classes above, both
royalists and imperialists, were unfriendly, one
regarding him as a usurper on the throne of
the legitimate king, and the other as a weak-
ling unfit to occupy the throne of Napoleon.
When Charles X. tried to secure the banish-
ment of the families of the men who had voted
for the death of Louis XVI., he may have had
in mind his cousin, the son of Philippe Egalite,
the wickedest and most despicable of the regi-
cides. Whatever his father had been, Louis
224 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Philippe was far from being a wicked man.
Whether teaching school in Switzerland, or
giving French lessons in America, he was the
kindest-hearted and most inoffensive of gentle-
men. The only trouble with this reign was
that it was not heroic. The most emotional
and romantic people in Europe had a common-
place king. Only once was there a throb of
genuine enthusiasm during the eighteen years
of his occupancy of the throne, and that was
when the remains of their adored Napoleon
were brought from St. 'Helena and placed in
that magnificent tomb in the Hotel des In-
valides by order of the king, who sent his son,
the Prince de Joinville, to bring this gift to
the people. The act was gracious, but it was
also hazardous. Perhaps the king did not
know how slight was his hold upon this im-
aginative people, nor the possible effect of con-
trast.
Under the new order of things in a consti-
tutional monarchy the king does not govern,
he reigns. He was chosen by the people as
their ornamental figure-head. But what if he
ceased to be ornamental? What was the use
of a king who in eighteen years had added not
.4 SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 225
a single ray of glory to the national name, but
who was using his high position to increase his
enormous private fortune, and incessantly beg-
ging an impoverished country for benefits and
emoluments for five sons?
An excellent father, truly, though a short-
sighted one. His power had no roots. The
cutting from the Orleans tree had never taken,
hold upon the soil, and toppled over at the sound
of Lamartine's voice proclaiming a republic
from the balcony of the Hotel de Ville.
When invited to step down from his royal
throne, he did so on the instant. Never did
king succumb with such alacrity, and never
did retiring royalty look less imposing than
when Louis Philippe was in hiding at Havre
under the name of " William Smith/' wait-
ing for safe convoy to England, without
having struck one blow in defence of his
throne.
But three terrible words had floated into the
open windows of the Tuileries. With the
echoes of 1792 still sounding in his ears, " Lib-
erty/' " Equality/' and " Fraternity/' shouted
in the streets of Paris, had not a pleasant
sound !
226 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Republicanism was an abiding sentiment in
France, even while two dull Bourbon kings
were stupidly trying to turn back the hands on
the dial of time, and while an Orleans, with
more supple neck, was posing as a popular sov-
ereign. During all this tiresome interlude the
real fact was developing. A Republican senti-
ment which had existed vaguely in the air was
materializing, consolidating, into a more and
more tangible reality in the minds of thinking
men and patriots.
The ablest men in the country stood with
plans matured, ready to meet this crisis. A
republic was proclaimed; M. de Lamartine,
Ledru-Rollin, General Cavaignac, M. Raspail,
and Louis Napoleon were rival candidates for
the office of President.
The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, and son
of Hortense, was only known as the perpetrator
of two very absurd attempts to overthrow the
monarchy under Louis Philippe. But since the
remains of the great emperor had been returned
to France by England, and the splendors of the
past placed in striking contrast with a dull,
lustreless present, there had been a revival of
Napoleonic memories and enthusiasm. Here
A SHORT HISTORY OF PRANCE. 227
was an opportunity to unite two powerful sen-
timents in one man & Napoleon at the head of
republican France would express the glory of
the past and the hope of the future.
The magic of the name was irresistible.
Louis Napoleon was elected President of the
second Republic, and history prepared to repeat
itself.
CHAPTER XVIIL
A REVOLUTION scarcely deserving- the name
had made France a second time a republic.
The Second French Republic was the creation
of no particular party. In fact, it seemed to
have sprung into being spontaneously out of
the soil of discontent.
Its immediate cause was the forbidding of
a banquet which was arranged to take place
in Paris on Washington's birthday, February
22d, 1848. M. Guizot, who had succeeded M.
Thiers as head of the ministry, knowing the
political purpose for which it was intended,
and that it was a part of an impending demon-
stration in the hands of dangerous agitators,
would not permit the banquet to take place.
This was the signal for an insurrection Sy
a Paris mob, which immediately led to a change
in the form of government a crisis which the
nation had taken no part in inaugurating.
Revolution had been written In French his-
228
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 229
tory in very large Roman capitals ! But when
the smoke from this smallest of revolutions
had curled away, there stood Louis Napoleon
son of the great Bonaparte's brother Louis
and Hortense de Beauharnais who had been
elected president by vote of the nation.
France did not know whether she was
pleased or not Inexperienced in the art of
government, she only knew that she wanted
prosperity, and conditions which would give
opportunity to the genius of her people. Any
form of government, or any ruler who could
produce these, would be accepted. She had
suffered much, and was bewildered by fears
of anarchy on one side and of tyranny on the
other. If she looked doubtfully at this dark,
mysterious, unmagnetic man, she remembered
it was only for four years, and was as safe as
any other experiment ; and the author of those
two ridiculous attempts at a restoration of the
empire, made at Strasbourg and at Boulogne,
was not a man to be feared.
The overthrow of monarchy in France had,
however, been taken more seriously in other
countries than at home. It had kindled anew
the fires of republicanism all over Europe:
230 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Kossuth leading a revolution in Hungary, and
Garibaldi and Mazzini in Italy, where Victor
Emmanuel, the young King of Sardinia, was
at the moment in deadly struggle with Austria
over the possession of Milan, and dreaming of
the day when a united Italy would be freed
from the Austrian yoke.
The man at the head of the French Republic
was surveying all these conditions with an in-
telligence, strong and even subtle, of which no
one suspected him, and viewed with satisfaction
the extinguishment of the revolutionary fires
in Europe, which had been kindled by the one
in France to which he owed his own elevation !
The Assembly soon realized that in this
prince-president it had no automaton to deal
with. A deep antagonism grew, and the cun-
ningly devised issue could not fail to secure
popular support to Louis Napoleon. When 'an
assembly is at war with the president because
it desires to restrict the suffrage, and he to
make it universal, can anyone doubt the re-
sult ? He was safe in appealing to the people
on such an issue, and sure of being sustained
in his proclamation dissolving the Assembly.
The Assembly refused to be dissolved.
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 231
Then, on the morning of December 2, 1851,
there occurred the famous coup d'etat, when
all the leading members were arrested at their
homes, and Louis Napoleon, relying absolutely
upon their suffrages, stood before the French
nation, with a constitution already prepared,
which actually bestowed imperial powers upon
himself. And the suddenness and the auda-
cious spirit with which it was done really
pleased a people wearied by incompetency in
their rulers ; and so, just one year later, in 1852,
the nation ratified the coup d'etat by voluntarily-
offering to Louis Napoleon the title, Napoleon
III., Emperor of the French.
His Mephistophelian face did not look as
classic under the laurel wreath as had his
uncle's, nor had his work the blinding splendor
nor the fineness of texture of his great model.
But then, an imitation never has. It was a
marble masterpiece, done in plaster ! But what
a clever reproduction it was! And how, by
sheer audacity, it compelled recognition and
homage, and at last even adulation in Europe!
and what a clever stroke it was, for this
heavy, unsympathetic man to bring up to his
throne from the people a radiant empress,
232 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
who would capture romantic and aesthetic
France !
It was a far cry from cheap lodgings in New
York to a seat upon the imperial throne of
France ; but human ambition is not easily satis-
fied. A Pelion always rises beyond an Ossa.
It was not enough to feel that he had re-estab-
lished the prosperity and prestige of France,
that fresh glory had been added to the Napole-
onic name. Was there not, after all, a certain
irritating reserve in the homage paid him?
was there not a touch of condescension in the
friendship of his royal neighbors? And had
he not always a Mordecai at his gate 1 while
the Faubourg St. Germain stood aloof and dis-
dainful, smiling at his brand-new aristoc-
racy?
War is the thing to give solidity to empire
and to reputation! So, when invited to join
the allies in a war upon Russia in defence of
Turkey, Louis Napoleon accepted with alac-
rity. France had no interests to serve in the
Crimean War (1854-56) ; but the newly made
emperor did not underestimate the value of
this recognition by his royal neighbors, and
French soldiers and French gun-boats largely
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 233
contributed to the success of the allied forces
in the East.
The little Kingdom of Sardinia, as the nu-
cleus of the new Italy was called, had also joined
the allies in this war; and thus a slender tie
had been created between her and France at a
time when Austria was savagely attacking her
possessions in the north of Italy.
When Napoleon was privately sounded by
Count Cavour, he named as his price for inter-
vention in Italy two things: the cession to
France of the Duchy of Savoy, and the mar-
riage of his cousin, Jerome Bonaparte, with
Clo tilde, the young daughter of Victor Em-
manuel. Savoy was the ancestral home of the
king, and the only thing he loved more than
Savoy was his daughter Clotilde, just fifteen
years old. The terms w T ere hard, but they were
accepted.
When Louis Napoleon entered Italy with
his army in 1859, it was as a liberator dra-
matically declaring that he came to " give Italy
to herself " ; that she was to be " free, from the
Alps to the Adriatic " ! The victory at Magenta
was the first step toward the realization of this
glorious promise; quickly followed by another
234 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
at Solferino. Milan was restored, Lombardy
was free, and as the news sped toward the
south the Austrian dukes of Tuscany, Modena,
and Parma fled in dismay, and these rejoicing
states offered their allegiance, not to the King
of Sardinia, now, but to the King of Italy.
There were only two more states to be freed,
only Venetia and the papal state of Rome, and
a " United Italy " would indeed be " free from
the Alps to the Adriatic."
Then the unexpected happened. The dra-
matic pledge was not to be kept. Venetia w r as
not to be liberated. The Peace of Villafranca
was signed. Austria relinquished Lombardy,
but was permitted to retain Venice. Cavour,
white with rage, said, " Cut loose from the
traitor! Refuse Lombardy!" But Victor
Emmanuel saw more clearly the path of wis-
dom ; and so, after only two months of warfare,
Napoleon was taking back to France Savoy and
Nice as trophies of his brilliant expedition.
This liberator of an Italy which was not
liberated, would have liked to restore the fleeing
Austrian dukes to their respective thrones in
Florence, Modena, and Parma ; but he did what
was more effectual and pleasing to the enemies
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 235
of a united Italy: he garrisoned Rome with
French troops, and promised Pius IX. any
needed protection for the papal throne.
One can imagine how Garibaldi's heart was
wrung when he exclaimed, " That man has
made me a foreigner in my own city ! " And
so might have said the king himself.
The emperor and the empire had been im-
mensely strengthened by the Italian campaign.
France was rejoicing in a phenomenal pros-
perity, reaching every part of the land. There
was a new France and a new Paris ; new boule-
vards were made, gardens and walks and drives
laid out, and a renewed and magnificent city
extended from the Bois de Vincennes on one
side to the Bois de Boulogne on the other.
With the building of public works there was
occupation for all, resulting in the repose for
which France had longed.
The Empress Eugenie was beautiful and
gracious, and her court at Versailles, Fontaine-
bleau, and the Tnileries compared well in splen-
dor with the traditions of the past.
The emperor's ambitions began to take on
a larger form. Under the auspices of the gov-
ernment, M. Lesseps commenced a transisth-
236 A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE.
mian canal, which would open communication
between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red
Sea. Then, in 1862, a less peaceful scheme
developed. An expedition was planned to
Mexico, against which country France had a
small grievance.
The United States was at this time fighting
for its life in a civil war of gigantic propor-
tions. The time was favorable for a plan con-
ceived by the emperor to convert Mexico into
an empire under a French protectorate. The
principle known as the Monroe Doctrine for-
bade the establishment of any European power
upon the Western hemisphere ; but the United
States was powerless at the moment to defend
it, and by the time her hands were free, even if
she were not disrupted, an Empire of Mexico
would be established, and French troops could
defend it.
In a few months the French army was in
the city of Mexico, and an Austrian prince was
proclaimed emperor of a Mexican empire.
This ill-conceived expedition came to a tragic
and untimely end in 1867. The civil war ended
triumphantly for the Union. Napoleon, real-
izing that, with her hands free, the United
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 237
States would fight for the maintenance of
the Monroe Doctrine, promptly withdrew the
French army from Mexico, leaving the emperor
to his fate. A republic was at once established,
and the unfortunate Maximilian was ordered
to be shot.
The finances of France and the prestige of
the emperor had both suffered from this miser-
able attempt. At the same time, something
had occurred which changed the entire Euro-
pean problem in a way most distasteful to
Louis Napoleon. Prussia, in a seven weeks'
war, had wrenched herself free from Austria
(1866). Instead of a disrupted United States,
which lie had expected, there w r as a dis-
rupted German Empire w y hich he did not
expect !
The triumph of Protestant Prussia was a
triumph of liberalism. It meant a new polit-
ical power, a rearrangement of the political
problem in Europe, with Austria and despot-
ism deposed. This was a distinct blow to the
Emperor's policy, and to the headship in Eu-
rope which was its aim. Then, too, the
Crimea, Magenta, and Solferino looked less
brilliant since this transforming seven-weeks'
238 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
war, behind which stood Bismarck with his
wide-reaching plans.
His own magnificent scheme of a Hapstmrg
empire in Mexico under a French protectorate
had failed, and now there had suddenly arisen,
as if out of the ground, a new political Ger-
many which rivalled France in strength. The
thing to do was to recover his waning prestige
by a victory over Prussia.
The Empress Eugenie, devoutly Catholic in
her sympathies, saw, in the ascendancy of Prot-
estant Prussia and the humiliation of Catholic
Austria, an impious blow aimed at the Catholic
faith in Europe. So, as the emperor wanted
war, and the empress wanted it, it only re-
mained to make France want it too; for war it
was to be.
Only one obstacle existed : there was nothing
to fight about! But that was overcome. In
1870 the heart of the people of France was
fired by the news that the French Ambassador
had been publicly insulted by the kindly old
King William. There had been some diplo-
matic friction over the proposed occupancy of
a vacant throne in Spain by a member of the
Hohenzollern (Prussian) family.
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 239
Whether true or false, the rumor served the
'desired purpose. France was in a blaze of in-
dignation, and war was declared.
Not a shadow of doubt existed as to the re-
sult as the French army moved away bearing
with it the boy prince imperial, that he might
witness the triumph. Not only would the
French soldiers carry everything before them,
but the southern German States would wel-
come them as deliverers, and the new 7 confeder-
ation would fall in pieces in their hands. The
birthday of Napoleon L, August 15th, must be
celebrated in Berlin!
This was the way it looked in France. How
was it in Germany? There was no North and
no South German. Men and states sprang
together as a unit, under the command of
Moltke and the Crown Prince Frederick
William.
The French troops never got beyond their
ow r n frontier. In less than three weeks they
were fighting for their existence on their own
soil. In less than a month the French emperor
was a prisoner, and in seven weeks his empire
had ceased to exist.
The surrender of Metz, August 4th, and of
240 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Sedan, September 2d, were monumental dis-
asters. With the news of the latter, and of
the capture of the emperor, the Assembly im-
mediately declared the empire at an end, and
proclaimed a third republic in France.
Two hundred and fifty thousand German
troops were marching on Paris. Fortifications
were rapidly thrown about the city, and the
siege, which was to last four months, had com-
menced.
The capitulation, which was inevitable from
the first, took place in January, 1871. The
terms of peace offered by the Germans were
accepted, including the loss of Alsace and Lor-
raine, and an enormous war indemnity.
The Germans were in Paris, and King Will-
iam, the Crown Prince (Unser Frits), Bis-
marck, and Von Moltke were quartered at Ver-
sailles; and in that place, saturated with his-
toric memories, there was enacted a strange
and unprecedented scene. On January 18,
1871, in the Hall of Mirrors, King William of
Prussia was formally proclaimed Emperor of
a new German Empire. Ludwig II., that pic-
turesque young King of Bavaria, in the name of
the rest of the German states, laid their united
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 241
allegiance at his feet, and begged him to accept
the crown of a united Germany.
Moved by his colossal misfortunes, and per-
haps partly in displeasure at having a French
republic once more at her door, England offered
asylum to the deposed emperor. There, from
the seclusion of Chiselhurst, he and his still
beautiful Eugenie watched the republic weath-
ering the first days of storm and stress.
CHAPTER XIX.
IMMEDIATELY after the deposition of the
emperor a third Republic of France was pro-
claimed. A temporary government was set tip
under the direction of MM. Favre, Gambetta,
Simon, Ferry, Rochefort, and others of pro-
nounced republican tendencies.
This was speedily superseded by a National
Assembly elected by the people, with M. Thiers
acting as its executive head.
During the siege of Paris an internal enemy
had appeared, more dangerous, and proving in
the end far more destructive to the city than
the German army which occupied it.
What is known as the Paris Commune was
a mob of desperate men led by Socialistic and
Anarchistic agitators of the kind which at
intervals try to terrorize civilization to-day.
The ideas at the basis of this insurrection
were the same as those which converted a
patriotic revolution into a " Reign of Terror JJ
242
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 243
in 1789, and Paris into a slaughter-house in
1792-93.
Twice during the siege had there been violent
and alarming outbreaks from this vicious ele-
ment; and now it was in desperate struggle
with the government of M. Thiers for control
of that city, which they succeeded in obtaining.
M. Thiers, his government, and his troops were
established at Versailles ; w r hile Paris, for two
months, was in the hands of these desperadoes,
who were sending out their orders from the
Hotel de Ville.
When finally routed by Marshal MacMa-
hon's troops, after drenching some of the prin-
cipal buildings with petroleum they set them
on fire. The Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville
were consumed, as were also portions of the
Louvre, the Palais Royal, and the Palais de
Luxembourg*, and the city in many places de-
faced and devastated.
The insurrection was not subdued without
a savage conflict, ten thousand insurgents, it
is said, being killed during the last week ; this
being followed by severe military executions.
Then, with some of her most dearly prized
historic treasures in ashes, and monuments
244 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
gone, Paris, scarred and defaced, had quiet at
last; and the organization of the third repub-
lic proceeded.
The uncertain nature of the republican sen-
timent existing throughout France at this crit-
ical moment is indicated by the character of
the Assembly elected by the people. More than
two-thirds of the members chosen by France
to organize her new republic were monarchists!
The name monarchist at that time compre-
hended three distinct parties, each with a
powerful following, namely:
The LEGITIMISTS, acting in the interest of
the direct Bourbon line, represented by the
Count of Chambord., the grandson of Charles
X., called by his party Henry V.
The ORLEANISTS, the party desiring the res-
toration of a limited monarchy, in the person
of the Count of Paris, grandson of Louis
Philippe.
The BONAPARTISTS, whose candidate, after
the death of the Emperor Louis Napoleon in
1873, was ^ e young Prince Imperial, son of
Napoleon III. [Napoleon II., the Duke of
Reichstadt, had died in 1832.]
M. Thiers had not an easy task in harmoniz-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 245
Ing* these various despotic types with each other,
nor in harmonizing them all collectively with
the republic of which he was chief. He aban-
doned the attempt in 1873, anc ^ Marshal Mac-
Mahon, a more pronounced monarchist than
he, succeeded to the office of president, with the
Due de Broglie at the head of a reactionary
ministry. It began to look as if there might
be a restoration under some one of the three
types mentioned. The Count of Paris gener-
ously offered to relinquish his claim in favor
of the Count of Chambord (Henry V.), if he
would accept the principles of a constitutional
monarchy, which that uncompromising Bour-
bon absolutely refused to do.
In the meantime republican sentiment in
France was not dead, nor sleeping. Calamitous
experiences had made it cautious. Freedom
and anarchy had so often been mistaken for
each other, it was learning to move slowly, not
by leaps and bounds as heretofore.
Gambetta, the republican leader, once so
fiery, had also grown cautious, A patriot and
a statesman, he was the one man who seemed
to possess the genius required by the condi-
tions and the time, and also the kind of mag-
246 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
netism which would draw together and crys-
tallize the scattered elements of his party.
It was the stimulus imparted by Gambetta
which made the government at last republican
in fact as well as in name; and as reactionary
sentiment increased on the surface, a republi-
can sentiment was all the time gathering in
volume and strength below.
The death of the prince imperial, in 1879,
in South Africa, was a severe blow to the im-
perialists, as the Bonapartists were also called,
who were now represented by Prince Victor,
the son of Prince Napoleon.
Although these rival princes occupied a
large place upon the stage, other matters had
the attention of the government of France,
which moved calmly on. The establishing of
a formal protectorate over Algeria belongs to
this period.
Ever since the reign of Louis XIV. the hand
of France had held Algeria with more or less
success. The Grand Monarch determined to
rid the Mediterranean of the " Barbary pi-
rates/' with which it was infested, and so they
were pursued and traced to their lairs in Al-
giers and Tunis. From this time on attempts
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 247
were made at intervals to establish a French
control over this African colony. During the
reign of Louis Philippe the French occupation
became more assured, and under the Republic
a formal protectorate was declared.
In 1881 Tunis also became a dependency of
France; a treaty to that effect being signed
bestowing authority upon a resident-general
throughout the so-called dominions of the bey.
The fact that in 1878 France participated
in the negotiations of the Congress at Berlin,
shows how quickly national wounds heal at the
top! And further proof that normal conditions
were restored, is given by the Universal Ex-
position, to which Paris bravely invited the
world in that same year.
In 1879 M. Grevy succeeded Marshal Mac-
Mahon. It was during M. Grevy's adminis-
tration that England and France combined in
a dual financial control over Egypt, in behalf
of the interests of the citizens of those two
countries who were holders of Egyptian bonds.
But the event of profoundest effect at this
period was the death of Gambetta in 1882.
The removal of the only man in France whom
they feared, was the signal for renewed activ-
248 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
ity among the monarchists, which found ex-
pression in a violent manifesto, immediately
issued by Prince Napoleon. This awoke the
apparently dormant republican sentiment.
After agitated scenes in the Chamber, Prince
Napoleon was arrested; and finally, after a
prolonged struggle, a decree was issued sus-
pending all the Orleans princes from their mili-
tary functions.
Almost immediately after this crisis the
Count of Chambord (Henry V.) died at Frohs-
dorf, August, 1883, by which event the Bour-
bon branch became extinct; and the Legiti-
mists, with their leader gone, united with the
Orleanists in supporting the Count of Paris.
A small war with Cochin-China was devel-
oped in 1884 out of a diplomatic difficulty,
which left France with virtual control over an
area of territory, including Annam and Ton-
quin, in the far East.
In 1885 M. Grevy was re-elected. This
was, of course, construed as a vote of approval
of the anti-monarchistic tone of the adminis-
tration. So republicanism grew bolder.
There had been an increased activity among
the agents of the monarchist party, which found
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 249,
expression in demonstrations of a very sig-
nificant character at the time of the marriage
of the daughter of the Count of Paris to the
Crown Prince of Portugal. The republicans
were determined to rid France of this unceas-
ing source of agitation, and their power to carry
out so drastic a measure as the one intended
is proof of the growth which had been silently
going on in their party.
The government was given discretionary
power to expel from the country all actual
claimants to the throne of France, with their
direct heirs.
The Count of Paris and his son, the Duke of
Orleans, Prince Napoleon and his son, Prince
Victor, were accordingly banished by presiden-
tial decree, in June, 1886. And when the Duke
of Aumale violently protested, he too was sent
into banishment.
In 1887 M. Grevy was compelled to resign,,
on account of an attempt to shield his son-in-
law, who was accused of selling decorations,
lucrative appointments, and contracts. M.
Sadi-Carnot, the grandson of the Minister of
War of the same name, who organized the
armies at the revolutionary period, was a re-
250 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE
publican of integrity and distinction, and was
elected by the combined votes of radicals and
conservatives.
Another crisis was at hand a crisis difficult
to explain because of the difficulty in under-
standing it.
The extraordinary popularity of General
Boulanger, Minister of War, a military hero
who had never held an important command,
nor been the hero of a single military exploit,
seems to present a subject for students of
psychological problems; but his name became
the rallying-point for all the malcontents in both
parties. A talent for political intrigue in this
popular hero made it appear at one time as if
he might really be moving on a path leading
to a military dictatorship.
The firmness of the government in dealing
with what seemed a serious crisis, was followed
by the swift collapse of the whole movement,
and when Boulanger was summoned before the
High Court of Justice upon the charge of in-
citing a revolution, he fled from the country,
and the incident was closed.
In one important respect the Third Republic
differs from the two preceding it. A consti-
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE. 251
tution had hitherto been supposed to be the
indispensable starting-point in the formation
of a government. No country had been so
prolific in constitutions as France, which, since
1790, is said to have had no less than seventeen ;
while England, since her Magna Charta made
her free in 1215, had had none at all.
An eloquent and definite statement of the
rights of a people once seemed as indispensable
to a form of government as a creed to a relig-
ious faith. Perhaps the world, as it grows
wiser, is less inclined to definite statements
upon many subjects! Our own Constitution,
probably the most elastic and wisest instru-
ment of the kind ever created, has in a century
required sixteen amendments to adapt it to
changing conditions.
What is known in France as the Constitu-
tion of 1875, i s > * n ^ ac ^> a ser * es f legislative
enactments passed within certain periods of
time ; these, as in England, serving as a substi-
tute for a Constitution framed like our own.
The French may have done wisely in trying
the English method of substituting a body of
laws, the growth of necessity, for a written
constitution. But this system, reached in Eng-
252 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
land through the slowly moving centuries, was
adopted in France, not with deliberate purpose
at first, but in order to avoid the clashing of
opposing views among the group of men in
charge of the republic in its inception; men
who, while ruling under the name of a republic,
really at heart disliked it, and were, in fact,
only enduring it as a temporary expedient on
the road to something better. And so the re-
public drifted. There are times when it is well
to drift; and in this case it has proved most
satisfactory.
Not alone the rulers, but the nation itself,
was in doubt as to the sort of government it
wanted, or how to attain it after it knew. It
was experimenting with that most difficult of
arts, the art of governing. An art which Eng-
land had been centuries in learning, how could
France be expected to master in a decade?
And when we consider the conditions and the
elements with which this inexperience was deal-
ing, the dangerous element at the top and the
other dangerous element beneath the surface,
the ambitions of the princes, and the volcanic
fires in the lowest class ; and when we think of
the waiting nation, hoping, fearing, expecting
A SHORT HISTORY OP FRANCE, 253
so much, with a tremendous war indemnity to
be paid, while their hearts were heavy over the
loss of two provinces ; when we recall all this,
we wonder, not that they made mistakes and
accomplished so little, but that the government
moved on, day by day, step by step, calmly
meeting crises from reactionaries or from radi-
cals, until the confidence of the world was won,
and the stability of republican France as-
sured.
From 1893 to *S96 was a period of colonial
expansion for France. The Kingdom of Da-
homey in Africa was proclaimed a French pro-
tectorate. Madagascar was subjugated, and in
1895 the Province of Hiang-Hung was ceded
by China.
In the year 1894 Sadi-Carnot was assassi-
nated in the streets of Lyons by an anarchist,
and M. Faure succeeded to the presidency.
A political alliance between France and Rus-
sia was formed at this time. It was also dur-
ing the presidency of M. Faure that the agi-
tation commenced in consequence of what is
known as the Affaire Dreyfus.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian and an
artillery officer upon the general staff, w r as ac~
254 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
cused of betraying military secrets to a foreign
power (Germany). He was tried by court-
martial, convicted, sentenced to be publicly de-
graded, having all the insignia of rank torn
from him, then to suffer perpetual solitary im-
prisonment on the Isle du Diable, off the coast
of French Guiana.
The life of the French Republic was threat-
ened by the profound agitation following this
sentence, in which the entire civilized world
joined; the impression prevailing that a pun-
ishment of almost unparalleled severity was
being inflicted upon a man whose guilt had
not been proven.
It was the general belief that the bitter en-
mity of the French army staff was on account
of the Semitic origin of the accused officer,
and that his being an Alsatian opened an easy
path to the accusation of treasonable acts with
Germany.
The trial of Captain Dreyfus was conducted
with closed doors, and the sentence was rigor-
ously carried out.
As time passed, the agitation became so pro-
found, and the public demand for a revision of
the case so imperative, that the French
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 255
of appeal finally took the matter under consid-
eration.
The ground upon which this revision was
claimed related to an alleged confession and to
the authorship of the bordereau, the document
which had been instrumental in procuring a
conviction. Upon these grounds it was claimed
that the judgment pronounced in December,
1894, should be annulled.
The court was compelled to yield, and an
order was issued for a second trial a trial
which resulted in revelations so damaging to
the heads of the French army that a revolu-
tion seemed imminent.
The accused man, wrecked by the five years
on the Isle du Diable, again appeared before
his accusers in the military court at Rennes.
His leading counsel, Labori, was shot while
conducting his case, but, as it proved, not fa-
tally. The conduct of the trial was such that
the dark secrets of this sinister affair were
never brought from their murky depths. And
with neither the guilt nor the innocence of
the victim proven, the amazing verdict was
rendered, " Guilty, with extenuating circum-
stances."
256 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
Such was the verdict of the French military
court. That of public opinion was different.
It was the unanimous belief among other na-
tions that the case against this unfortunate
man had completely collapsed. But in order to
protect the French army from the disgrace
which was inseparable from a vindication of
Dreyfus, he must be sacrificed.
The sentence pronounced at the conclusion
of the second trial was imprisonment in a
French fortress for ten years.
This sentence was remitted by President
Loubet; and, with the brand of two convic-
tions and the memory of his " degradation "
and of Devil's Island burned deep into his soul.,
a broken man was sent forth free.
Not the least dramatic incident in this affair
was the impassioned championship of M. Zola,
the great novelist, who hurled defamatory
charges at the court, in the hope of being placed
under arrest for libel, and thus be given oppor-
tunity to establish facts repressed by the mili-
tary court. By the French law, the accused
must justify his defamatory words, and this
was the opportunity sought.
The heroic effort was not in vain. Zola was
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 257
found guilty and sentenced to a year's Impris-
onment, which he avoided by going into exile.
But light had been thrown upon the " Affaire. 99
And he was content.
Upon the sudden death of M. Faure in 1899,
Emile Loubet, a lawyer of national reputation,
was chosen to succeed him, and his adminis-
tration commenced while this storm was reach-
ing its final culmination.
With the release of Captain Dreyfus the
agitation subsided. But before very long an-
other storm-cloud appeared.
A conflict between clericalism and the Gov-
ernment of France is not a new thing. Indeed,
it w r as at its height as long ago as the thirteenth
century, when Philip IV. and Pope Boniface
had their little unpleasantness, resulting in
Philip's taking the popes into his own keeping
at Avignon, and in the issuance of a " Prag-
matic Sanction," which defended France from
papal encroachments.
The old conflict is still going on, and will
continue until the last frail thread uniting
Church and State is severed.
The particular contention which agitates
France to-day, inaugurated by the late Minis-
25 8 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
ter Waldeck-Rousseau, and continued by his
successor, M. Combes, had its origin in an act
called the " Law of Associations/' the purpose
of which was to restrict the political power of
the Church by means of the suppression of re-
ligious orders of men and women upon the soil
of France.
This was considered an act of extreme op-
pression and tyranny on the one side, and as a
measure essential to the safety of the republic
on the other.
In support of their contention the republican
party claimed that the French clergy had al-
ways been in alliance with every reactionary
movement, and that every agitation and in-
trigue against the life of the Third Republic
had had clericalism as its origin and disturbing
cause. Hence, the expulsion of the religious
orders was declared to be essential to the safety
of the republic.
But the Law of Associations was only pre-
liminary to the real end in view, which was
accomplished in December, 1905, when a bill
providing for the actual separation of Church
and State was passed by the French Senate.
There was a time when a measure so revolu-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 259
tionary would have opened the flood-gates o
passion, and let loose torrents of invective;
and the calmness with which it was debated
in the French Parliament makes it manifest
that the highest intelligence of the nation had
become convinced of its necessity. The bill
provides for the transfer to the government
of all church properties. This change of own-
ership necessitated the taking of inventories
in the churches, which many simple and de-
vout people, incapable of understanding its
political meaning, believed was a religious per-
secution, and resisted by force. The bill re-
cently passed is aimed not at the Church, but at
" Clericalism/' a powerful element within the
Church, which has been determined to make it
a political as well as a spiritual power. With
the passage of this bill there no longer exists
the opportunity for political and ecclesiastical
intrigues, which have made the Church a
hatching-ground for aristocratic conspiracies.
The severance now accomplished is not com-
plete as with us. Money will still be appro-
priated from the public treasury for the main-
tenance of churches in France. But the power
derived from the ownership of valuable estates
260 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
is no longer in the hands of men in sympathy
with the enemies of the existing form of gov-
ernment.
Another matter which for a time seemed to
threaten the peace of France has been happily
adjusted. At an international conference held
at Algeciras, for the purpose of considering
the demoralized conditions existing in the
State of Morocco, France and Germany came
so sharply in collision that serious consequences
seemed imminent, consequences which might
even involve all of Europe.
France, with her territory adjoining the dis-
turbed state, and her long Algerian coast-line
to protect, naturally felt that she was entitled
to special recognition; while Germany, having
invited the conference, claimed a position of
leadership. It was over the special privileges
desired by each that the tension between these
two states became so acute; and finally the
one question before the conference was whether
France or Germany should be the custodian of
Morocco, insure the safety of its foreign popu-
lation, have charge of its finances, and be
responsible for the policing of its coast Of
course the nation assigned to this duty would
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 261
hold the predominant influence in North Af-
rican affairs, and it was this large stake
which gave such intensity to the game. The
final award was given to France, and Germany,
deeply aggrieved but with commendable self-
control, has accepted the decision.
The elections recently held in France have
afforded an opportunity to discover the senti-
ment of the nation concerning the policies,
radical and almost revolutionary, which have
made the concluding days of M. Loubet's in-
cumbency an epoch in the life of France. The
result has been an overwhelming vote of ap-
proval. In M. Fallieres, who has been elected
to the presidency, there is found a man even
more representative of a new France than was
his predecessor. A man of the people ? the
grandson of a blacksmith, a lawyer by profes-
sion, M. Fallieres has been identified with
every important movement since he was first
elected Deputy in 1876; has been eight times
Minister; was President of the Senate during
the seven years of President Loubefs term of
office; and January 17, 1906, was elected to
the highest position in the state. The appoint-
ment of M. Sarrien, with his well-known syra-
262 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
pathies, to the office of Prime Minister, sets
at rest any doubt as to the policy initiated by
M. Waldedc-Rousseau, and consummated by
M. Combes.
With each succeeding administration France
has gained in strength and stability, and in the
self-control and calmness which make for both.
The government and the people have learned
that the spasmodic way is not a wise and effec-
tual way.
The monarchist party has disappeared as a
serious political factor. There is peace, ex-
ternal and internal And there is prosper-
ity that surest guarantee of a continued
peace.
One source of the phenomenal prosperity of
France in this trying period since 1871 has
been her mastery in the art of beauty. Leading
the world as she does in this, her art products
are sought by every land and every people.
The nations must and will have them ; and so,
with an assured market, her industries prosper,
and there is content in the cottage and wealth
in the country at large.
What a change from the time less than four
decades ago, when, with military pride hum-
A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE. 263
bled in the dust, with national pride wounded
by the loss of two provinces, and loaded down
with an immense war indemnity, the people set
about the task of rehabilitation ! And in what
an incredibly short time the galling debt had
been paid, financial prosperity and political
strength restored.
For thirty-four years the republic has ex-
isted. Communistic fires, always smouldering,
have again and again burst forth dema-
gogues, fanatics, and those creatures for whom
there is no place in organized society, whose ele-
ment is chaos, standing ready to fan the flames
of revolt: with Orleanist, Bonapartist, Bour-
bon, ever on the alert, watching for opportunity
to slip in through the open door of revolution.
Phlegmatic Teutons and slow-moving An-
glo-Saxons look in bewilderment at a nation
which has had seven political revolutions in
a hundred years !
But France, complex, mobile, changeful as
the sea, in riotous enjoyment of h^r new-found
liberties, casts off a form of government as
she would an ill-fitting garment. She knows
the value of tranquillity she had it for one
thousand years! The people, who have only
264 A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE.
breathed the tipper air for a century the peo-
ple, who were stifled under feudalism, stamped
upon by Valois kings, riveted down by Riche-
lieu, then prodded, outraged, and starved by
Bourbons, have become a great nation. Many-
sided, resourceful, gifted, it matters not
whether they have called the head of their
government consul, emperor, king, or presi-
dent. They are a race of freemen, who can
never again be enslaved by tyrannous system.
There may be in store for France new revo-
lutions and fresh overturnings. Not anchored,
as is England, in an historic past which she
reveres, and with a singularly gifted and emo-
tional people who are the sport of the cur-
rent of the hour, who can predict her future!
But whatever that future may be, no American
can be indifferent to the fate of a nation to
whom we owe so much. Nor can we ever
forget that in the hour of our direst extremity,
and regardless of cost to herself, she helped us
to establish our liberties, and to take our place
among the great nations of the earth.
SOVEREIGNS AND RULERS OF
FRANCE.
KINGS OF THE FRANKS
MEROVINGIAN LINE
A. D.
Clovis 496
Thierry, Clodomir, Clothaire, CMIdebert 51-
Clothaire
Charibert, Gontran, Chilperic, Sigheben
CMIdebert
Theodebert, Thierry II., Clothaire III.
559
596
Dagobert 628
Clovis II., Sigheben II 638
Clothaire III., Chilperic II 656
Thierry III., Dagobert II 673
Clovis III 690
Childebert III 695
Dagobert III 7 11
Chilperic III 7* 6
Thierry IV 7 2
Chilperic IV. 74*
CARLO VTNGIAN LINE
Pepin 75 2
Charlemagne 7 6S
Louis (The Debonnaire) 814
KINGS OF FRANCE
AFTER DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE
Charles (The Bald) ^43
Louis (The Stammerer) 8 77
265
266 SOVEREIGNS AND RULERS OF FRANCE.
A. D.
Louis III. and Carloman ....... 879
Charles (The Fat) 884
Hugh 887
Charles (The Simple) 898
Raoul 923
Louis IV 936
Lothaire 954
Louis V. . . 986
CAPETIAN LINE
Hugh Capet 987
Robert 996
Henry I IO 3i
Philip 1 1060
Louis VI. (The Fat) 1108
Louis VII. (The Young) 1137
Philip II. (Philip Augustus) 1180
Louis VIII 1223
Louis IX. (The Saint) 1226
Philip III. (The Hardy) 1270
Philip IV. (The Handsome) 1285
Louis X 1314
Philip V 1316
Charles IV. (The Handsome) 1322
VALOIS BRANCH OF CAPETIAN LINE
Philip VI. (de Valois) 1328
John (The Pious) I 35
Charles V 1364
Charles VI 1380
Charles VII 1422
Louis XI 1461
Charles VIII 1483
VALOIS ORLEANS BRANCH
Louis XII 1498
SOVEREIGNS AND RULERS OF FRANCE. 267
VALOIS ANGOULEME
A. D.
Francis 1 1515
Henry' II 1547
Francis II I 559
Charles IX 1560
Henry III. ... , 1574
BOURBON BRANCH
Henry IV 1589
Louis XIII - 1610
Louis XIV. 1643
Louis XV 17*5
Louis XVI 1774
FIRST REPUBLIC, 1792
FIRST EMPIRE
Napoleon Bonaparte 1804
RESTORATION OF MONARCHY BOURBON
BRANCH
Louis XVIII 1814
Charles X 1824
KING OF THE FRENCH
Louis Philippe 2830
SECOND REPUBLIC, 1848
SECOND EMPIRE
Louis Napoleon I ^5 2
THIRD REPUBLIC, 1871
PRESIDENTS OF THIRD REPUBLIC
Adolphe Thiers 2871
Marshal MacMahon I ^73
Jules Grevy l8 79
Sadi-Carnot .......-- I 8 7
Francois Felix Faure *|94
Emile Loubet I5 9f
Armand Failieres - - *9O 6
INDEX.
Abelard, 68, 69
Academy, The French, 138
African, 261
Agincourt, Battle of, 89
Albigensian War, 66
Alexander, Emperor of Russia,
213*215
Algeria, 246
Algeciras, 260
Alsace, 144, 240
America, 158, 164-167, 175,
176, 183, 196, 197, 209, 236
Anglo-Saxons, 263
Angouleme, Duchesse d', 216
Anne of Austria, 142, 143
Assembly, National, 181-185,
187-190, 230, 240, 242, 244
Associations, Law of, 258
Attila, 22
Augsburg, League of, 154
Aurnale, Duke of, 249
Aurelius, Marcus, 14, 18, 20
Austrasia, 31
Austria, 142, 162, 198, 199, 202,
203, 204,206, 211, 230, 233,
234, 237, 238
Babylonian Captivity, 77
Bastille, The, 97, 141, 146, 184,
i85
Bayard, Chevalier, 105
Beauharnais, Eugene, 212
Beauharnais, Hortense, 212,
226
Beauharnais, Josephine, 207,
208, 213
Bismarck, 238, 240
Black Prince, 82-84
Blanche of Castile, 69, 70, 73
Blenheim, Battle of, 156
Bliicher, 219
Bonaparte, Jerome, 212
Bonaparte, Joseph, 212
Bonaparte, Louis, 212, 229
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 171, 172,
203-215, 218-220, 224
Bonapartists, 244, 246, 263
Boulanger, General, 250
Bourbon, Antony de, ii6-nS
Bourbons, 116-118, 129, 244,
263, 264
Bourgeoisie, Si, 100
1 Bretigny, Treaty of, 83
269
270
INDEX.
Britain, 2
Bur f esses j 58
Burgundy, Duke of, 85-89, 97,
105
Caesar, Julius, 10-12, 15
Calais, 79
Campo Formio, Treaty of, 205,
206
Capet, Hugh, 48
Carlovingian Kings, 31-48
Carnot, 249, 253
Chalons, Battle of, 22
Chambord, Count of, 244, 245,
248
Charlemagne, 36, 45
Charles Mattel, 31, 34
Charles V, 83-85
Charles VI, 85-88
Charles VII, 90-96, 98
Charles VIII, 101-104
Charles IX, 1 19, 128
Charles X, 172, 221, 222, 223
Christianity, 14-23, 32-34, 49-
5i
Church and State, 258
Cinq Mars, 141
Clericalism, 258, 259
Clovis, 10, 24-27, 29
Cochin-China, War with, 248
Colbert, 146, 148, 152
Coligny, Admiral, 115-124
Combes, 258, 262
Committee of Public Safety,
191, 199
Commune, The, 242, 243
Conciergerie, 191, 193, 199
Concini, 135, 136
Conde, 144, 148
Consulate, 208-210
Corday, Charlotte, 191, 192
Crecy, Battle of, 79
Crimean War, 232
Crusades, 42, 59-61, 63, 68, 73,
74,75
Dahomey, 253
Danton, 191, 200
Dauphin, So
Desmoulins, Camille, 184
Directory, 203, 206-208
Donation of Pep-in, 34
Drey/us, Affaire, 253-258
Dreyfus, Alfred, 253, 257
Druidism, 14, 20
Dumouriez, 198, 199
Edward III of England, 79, 82
Egypt, 206, 207, 247
Elba, 215
Elizabeth, Princess, 189, 195,
197
Enghien, Duke d', 209
England, 41, 53, 61-64, 79, 82,
no, in, 154, 164, 165, 175,
176, 202, 203, 206, 209, 213,
219, 22O, 241, 247, 251
Eugenie, Empress, 235, 238,
240
Fallieres, 261
Faure, 253, 257
INDEX.
271
Feudal System, 42, 44~46> 85,
98
Flanders, 108, 149
Fontenay, Battle of, 40
Fouquet, 147
Fouquier-Tinville, 191
Francis I, 106-112
Francis II, 116
Francis Joseph, 211, 213
Franks, 23
Freemen, 57
French Parliament, 269
French Senate, 258
Fronde, 143
Galigai, Eleonora, 135-137
Galiicia, 7
Garnbetta, 245-247
Gaul, 2-4, n, 24
Gauls. 4
Genevieve, 23
Germany, 40, 41, icS, in, 155?
156, 210, 211, 212, 214, 238-
241,254,260,261
Girondists, 187-189, 193, 197-
200
Godfrey of Boulogne, 60
Goths, 8, 12, 22, 23
Greece, 3, 7
Grevy, 247-249
Guesclin, Bertrand du, 83, 84
Guise, Duke of, 115-129
Gustavus Adolphus, 138, 142
Hapsburgs, 133, 142, 146, I5 S >
214,238
Henry II, 115, 116
Henry III, 128, 129
Henry (IV) of Navarre, 120,
121, 123, 128-134
Henry V of England, 89, 90
Holland, 150, 151, 153, 212
Holy Roman Empire, 39, 108,
133, 211
Huguenots, 117, 118, 120-131,
137, 141, 152, 153
Huns, 22
Indemnity, 253
Irenseus, 14
I Italy, 41, 74, 101-103, 105, 106,
| 204-206 3 212, 230, 233-235
i
i Jacobins, 187-189, 199
| Jena, Battle of, 211
! Joan of Arc, 91-95
John, King, 80-83
' : Kelts, 2-4, 12
Knights Templar, 77, 189
Kyinrians, 7
] Lafayette, Marquis de, 183,
j 185,187,188,222
i Lamartine, 225
: La Rochelle, Siege of, 141
| Latin Quarter, 69
i La^v, John, 161
| Legitimists, 244, 248
; Leipsic, Battle of, 215
'i Lombards, 34, 38
: Lorraine, 240
272
INDEX.
Lothaire, 40
Loubet, Emile, 256, 257, 261
Louis the Debonnaire, 40
Louis VI, 58, 59
Louis VII, 57, 61, 62
Louis VIII, 69
Louis IX, 69-73
Louis XI, 96, 98, 101
Louis XII, 104, 105
Louis XIII, 135, 136, 139-142,
148
Louis XIV, 143, 145-159) 246
Louis XV, 159-173, 181
Louis XVI, 133, 172, 174, 175,
177-190, 197, 216
Louis XVIII, 172, 197, 208,
2l6-2l8, 220, 221
Louis Philippe, 172, 198, 199,
222-226, 247
Louisiana, 209
Louvois, 148
Lutetia, 13
Luynes, Albert de, 136
MacMahon, Marshal, 243, 247
Madagascar, 253
Magenta, Battle of, 233
Mahometanism, 32-34
Maire du Palais, 27, 31
Marat, 184, 191, 192
Maria Louisa, 214, 215
Maria Theresa, Empress of
Austria, 161
Marie Antoinette, 164, 172, 174,
186, 193-105, 197
Marignano, Battle of, 106
Massillia, 5
Mazarin, Cardinal, 143, 144,
146
Medici, Catharine de j , H5-I2&
Medici, Marie de', 134, 135,
140
Meroveus, 23, 24
Merovingian Kings, 23-34, 46,
48
Metz, Surrender of, 239
Mexico, 236, 237
Mirabeau, 182, 183
Moltke, 239, 240
Monarchists, 262
Monroe Doctrine, 236, 237
Morocco, 260
Murat, 212
Nantes, Edict of, 131, 133, 141,
146, 152, 158
Napoleon Bonaparte, 171, 172,
203-215, 218-220, 224
Napoleon (III), Louis, 226,
227, 229-239, 241
Napoleon, Prince, 246, 248,
249
Necker, 178
Neustria, 31
Ney, Marshal, 218, 220
Normandy, 47, 53, 54, 62, 64,
66
Normans, 44, 47
Northmen, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48,
53
Nymwegen, Peace of, 149, 151
INDEX.
273
Orleanists, 244, 248, 263
Orleans, Duke of, 86-89, 105,
141, 159, 172, 182, 183, 222,
249
Paris, Count of, 244, 245, 248,
249
Paris, Siege of, 240, 242, 243
Pepin, 31, 34,35>4S
Peter the Hermit, 59, 60
Philip Augustus, 62-67
Philip III, 75
Philip IV, 75-78
Philip VI, 78
Philippe Egalite, 184, 198, 199,
222
Poitiers, Battle of, 82
Pope, The, 34, 35> 37~39> 49,
59, 60, 65, 75-77; IC 7> II 3 3
155,210,235,257
Pragmatic Sanction, 107, 162
Prince Imperial, 244, 246
Protestantism, in, 112-114,
138, 142, 153. 158. 238
Provence, 5, 65, 66, 70
Prussia, 142, 155, 203, 211, 237
Ravaillac, 134
Raymond VII of Toulouse, 65,
66, 70
Reformation, The, in, 113
Republic, Second, 225-231
.Republic, Third, 242 et seq.
Revolution, French, 166, 167,
179-201
Revolutionary Tribunal, 189,
193
Rheinbund, 211
Richelieu, Cardinal, 137-143,
167, 263
Robert the Strong, 48, 49
Robespierre, 183, 191, 200
Rois Faineants, 29, 30, 47
Romans, 5-7
Rome, 5-8, 10-14
Rousseau, 170, 171
Russia, 41, 203, 213, 214, 232,
2 53
Ryswick, Treaty of, 149
Sadi-Camot, 249, 253
St. Bartholomew, Massacre of,
123-128
St. Helena, 220
Salic Law, 27, 78, 79, 129, 146,
161
Sarrien, 261
Sedan, Battle of, 240
Serfs, 46, 57
Simon, 195
Solferino, Battle of, 234
Spain, 41, 69, 105, 108, 122,
123, 133, 142, 146, I49> I5 8
165, 2C2, 2C9, 212, 221,
235
Spanish Succession, War of the,
155
States-General, 76, Si, 82, 84,
i33 i35 J 79
Stuart, Marie, 115, 116, nS
274
INDEX.
Sully, Duke of, 132, 133
Swiss Guard, iSS
Talleyrand, 218
Temple, The, 189, 195
Teutons, 263
Thiers, 228, 242, 243, 244
Third Republic, 258
Tiers Etat, 56, 76, 82, 133, 179,
181, 183
Tilsit, Peace of 212
Toulouse, 65, 66, 70
Tours, Battle of, 34
Troves, Treaty of, 89
"Truce of God," 51, 60
Turenne, 144, 148
Turgot : 177, 178
Utrecht, Treaty of, 149
Valois, 264
Varennes, 188
Verdun, Treaty of, 40, 41
Versailles, 147, 152, 156, 163,
165, 178, 182, 186, 187, 235,
240, 243
Villafranca, Peace of, 234
Visigoths, 26
Voltaire, 162, 169
Waldeck -Rousseau, 258, 262
Waterloo, Battle of, 219
Wellington, Duke of, 219
William, Duke of Normandy,
54
Williams, Eleazer, 196
Zola, 257
591